Events on January 3 47
Year 1521
Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther in the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem.
Year 1653
By the Coonan Cross Oath, the Eastern Church in India cuts itself off from colonial Portuguese tutelage.
Year 1749
Benning Wentworth issues the first of the New Hampshire Grants, leading to the establishment of Vermont.
Year 1749
The first issue of Berlingske, Denmark's oldest continually operating newspaper, is published.
Year 1777
American General George Washington defeats British General Lord Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton.
Year 1815
Austria, the United Kingdom, and France form a secret defensive alliance against Prussia and Russia.
Year 1823
Stephen F. Austin receives a grant of land in Texas from the government of Mexico.
Year 1868
Meiji Restoration in Japan: The Tokugawa shogunate is abolished; agents of Satsuma and Chōshū seize power.
Year 1888
The James Lick telescope at the Lick Observatory, measuring 91 cm in diameter, is used for the first time. It was the largest refracting telescope in the world at the time.
Year 1911
A gun battle in the East End of London left two dead and sparked a political row over the involvement of then-Home Secretary Winston Churchill.
Year 1913
An Atlantic coast storm sets the lowest confirmed barometric pressure reading for a non-tropical system in the continental United States.
Year 1919
At the Paris Peace Conference, Emir Faisal I of Iraq signs an agreement with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann on the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Year 1932
Martial law is declared in Honduras to stop a revolt by banana workers fired by the United Fruit Company.
Year 1933
Minnie D. Craig becomes the first woman elected as Speaker of the North Dakota House of Representatives, the first woman to hold a Speaker position anywhere in the United States.
Year 1944
World War II: Top Ace Major Greg "Pappy" Boyington is shot down in his Vought F4U Corsair by Captain Masajiro Kawato flying a Mitsubishi A6M Zero.
Year 1945
World War II: Admiral Chester W. Nimitz is placed in command of all U.S. Naval forces in preparation for planned assaults against Iwo Jima and Okinawa in Japan.
Year 1946
Popular Canadian American jockey George Woolf dies in a freak accident during a race; the annual George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award is created to honor him.
Year 1949
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the central bank of the Philippines, is established.
Year 1953
Frances P. Bolton and her son, Oliver from Ohio, become the first mother and son to serve simultaneously in the U.S. Congress.
Year 1961
The United States severs diplomatic relations with Cuba over the latter's nationalization of American assets.
Year 1961
The SL-1 nuclear reactor is destroyed by a steam explosion in the only reactor incident in the United States to cause immediate fatalities.
Year 1961
A protest by agricultural workers in Baixa de Cassanje, Portuguese Angola, turns into a revolt, opening the Angolan War of Independence, the first of the Portuguese Colonial Wars.
Year 1976
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights entered into force.
Year 1993
In Moscow, Russia, George Bush and Boris Yeltsin sign the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).
Year 1994
More than seven million people from the former apartheid Homelands receive South African citizenship.
Year 2002
Israeli forces seize the Palestinian freighter Karine A in the Red Sea, finding 50 tons of weapons.
Year 2004
Flash Airlines Flight 604 crashes into the Red Sea, resulting in 148 deaths, making it one of the deadliest aviation accidents in Egyptian history.
Year 2009
The first block of the blockchain of the decentralized payment system Bitcoin, called the Genesis block, was established by the creator of the system, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Year 2015
Boko Haram militants raze the entire town of Baga in north-east Nigeria, starting the 2015 Baga massacre and killing as many as 2,000 people.