7th January 1979: Pol Pot of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (Cambodia) overthrown when Vietnamese forces capture the capital city Phnom Penh
After the Vietnamese forces captured Phnom Penh on 7 January 1979, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge forces fled into the ...
7 Jan 0s
6th January 1941: President Franklin D. Roosevelt sets out the “Four Freedoms” in his State of the Union address
Roosevelt identified freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear that, together, provided a moral framework for US engagement in the ...
6 Jan 0s
5th January 1968: The Prague Spring begins with Alexander Dubček becoming the new leader of Czechoslovakia
Dubček replaced Novotný as the leader of Czechoslovakia on 5 January 1968 and quickly began to introduce a series of political and economic reforms known as ‘socialism with a human ...
5 Jan 0s
4th January 1642: Charles I of England attempts to arrest the Five Members of Parliament, prompting the English Civil War
Charles I himself entered the House of Commons chamber – an act that was a huge violation of Parliamentary privilege – and sat in the Speaker’s chair to demand the Five Members be handed over to ...
4 Jan 0s
3rd January 1868: Meiji Restoration begins in Japan when loyalists seize control of the Kyoto Imperial Palace
Supporters of imperial restoration occupied key positions in Kyoto on 3 January 1868 and announced the abolition of the Tokugawa ...
3 Jan 0s
2nd January 1980: Jimmy Carter instigates the end of détente after the USSR invades Afghanistan
In response to Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, Jimmy Carter brought the period of détente to an ...
2 Jan 0s
1st January 1942: Declaration by the United Nations agreed and signed by the four major Allied nations during the Second World War
The original signatories – United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the USSR’s Ambassador to the US Maxim Litvinov, and Chinese Minister of Foreign Affa...
1 Jan 0s
31st December 1853: New Year’s Eve dinner takes place inside a model of an Iguanodon at the Crystal Palace Park in south London
The dinner was widely reported and helped generate public interest in the Crystal Palace Park's life-sized models of extinct animals, which opened to visitors the following ...
31 Dec 20250s
