On January 10:
49 BC Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, signaling the start of civil war.
1776 Thomas Paine published Common Sense.
Oil painting by Auguste Millière
1806 Dutch settlers in Cape Town surrendered to the British.
1810 The marriage of Napoleon and Josephine was annulled.
Joséphine kneels before Napoléon during his coronation at Notre Dame.
1815 Sir John Alexander Macdonald, first Prime Minister of Canada, was born (d. 1891).
1834 Lord Acton, British historian, was born (d. 1902).
1838 French Bishop Jean Baptiste François Pompallier, a priest and brother of the Society of Mary, arrived at Hokianga.
1863 The London Underground, the world’s oldest underground railway, opened between London Paddington station and Farringdon station.
1901 The first great Texas oil gusher was discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas.
1903 Barbara Hepworth, English sculptor, was born (d. 1975).
Hepworth’s Family of Man in bronze, 1970
1908 Bernard Lee, English actor was born (d. 1981).
Lee as M in The Man with the Golden Gun.
1920 The League of Nations held its first meeting and ratified the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I.
1922 Arthur Griffith was elected President of the Irish Free State.
1930 Roy Edward Disney, American film executive, was born (d. 2009).
1936 Burnum Burnum, Australian activist, actor and author, was born (d. 1997).
1945 Rod Stewart, Scottish singer, was born.
1946 The first General Assembly of the United Nations opened in London. Fifty-one nations were represented.
1948 Donald Fagen, American musician (Steely Dan), was born.
1949 George Foreman, American boxer, was born.
1959 Fran Walsh, New Zealand screenwriter, was born.
1960 – Brian Cowen, Taoiseach of Ireland, was born.
1962 NASA announced plans to build the C-5 rocket booster. It became better known as the Saturn V moon rocket, which launched every Apollo moon mission.
1972 – Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returned to the newly independent Banglades as president after spending over nine months in prison in Pakistan.
1974 Jemaine Clement, New Zealand actor, was born.
1984 – The United States and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations.
1990 Time Warner was formed from the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications Inc.
2001 – A large piece of the chalk cliff at Beachy Head collapsed into the sea.
2005 – A mudslide in La Conchita, California, killed10 people, injured many more and closed Highway 101, the main coastal corridor between San Francisco and Los Angeles, for 10 days.
