January

1

1950 -- The present day, in ra­dio­car­bon dat­ing terms. Every day since may be con­sid­ered to ex­ist in the fu­ture.

2

1967 -- De­but ap­pear­ance of Ron­ald Rea­gan as `Gover­nor' in State of Cal­i­for­nia, which he would per­form for a run of eight years.

3

1861 -- Delaware de­cides not to se­cede from the Union, main­ly for sen­ti­men­tal rea­sons.

4

1865 -- New York Stock Ex­change moves to a larg­er space. It oc­cu­pies in­creas­ing amounts of room dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry, be­fore re­peat­ed­ly shrink­ing in the next.

5

1974 -- High­est tem­per­a­ture record­ed in Antarc­ti­ca. U.S. schoolchil­dren are no longer taught that a new ice age is ap­proach­ing.

6

1661 -- An at­tempt to in­stall King Je­sus in Lon­don is un­suc­cess­ful.

7

1959 -- In a clas­sic bait-and-switch, Fidel Cas­tro waits to come out as so­cial­ist un­til af­ter his gov­ern­ment is rec­og­nized by the Unit­ed States.

8

1835 -- U.S. na­tion­al debt is ze­ro, as the re­sult of a hia­tus be­tween wars. This has been as­sured to nev­er hap­pen again.

9

1839 -- The da­guerreo­type pro­cess, in which the sub­ject is du­pli­cat­ed and im­mo­bi­lized in a time-frozen two di­men­sion­al form, is in­tro­duced to a hor­ri­fied world.

10

1946 -- The Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al Assem­bly be­gins its year­ly ses­sions, to which all mem­bers bring words.

11

1927 -- Film in­dus­try in­sid­ers are lured to a pri­vate din­ner par­ty, at which they are ini­ti­at­ed in­to a ca­bal lat­er re­spon­si­ble for cre­at­ing and cu­rat­ing the Acade­my Awards.

12

1967 -- James Bed­ford be­comes the first man cry­on­i­cal­ly pre­served. Hav­ing died sev­er­al hours be­fore, he will like­ly re­main in that state if ev­er thawed.

13

1953 -- Stal­in ac­cus­es doc­tors of plot­ting to kill high-lev­el of­fi­cials in­clud­ing him­self. He lat­er dies due to lack of med­i­cal care, af­ter which the doc­tors are re­in­stat­ed.

14

2005 -- Europe lands a probe on one of Saturn's moons, in the first step to­ward col­o­niza­tion.

15

1943 -- Pen­tagon build­ing ded­i­cat­ed in Vir­ginia. Although there was no for­mal cer­e­mo­ny, spe­cial se­cu­ri­ty clear­ance was re­quired for the af­ter-par­ty.

16

A.D. 550 -- Rome is cap­tured by sim­ply brib­ing the de­fend­ers, af­ter at­tack­ing them re­peat­ed­ly proves in­ef­fec­tive.

17

1377 -- An at­tempt to re­turn the pa­pa­cy to Rome is fol­lowed by a wider schism, the death of the pope, and a new se­ries of an­tipopes with de­creas­ing charge.

18

1896 -- X-ray ma­chine makes its for­mal de­but, launch­ing new trends in fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phy.

19

1977 -- Snow falls in Mi­a­mi, Fla., caus­ing a quick but brief re­in­state­ment of ap­proach­ing ice age the­o­ry in U.S. schools.

20

2007 -- First non-Sovi­et vis­i­tors to the orig­i­nal South Pole of Inac­ces­si­bil­i­ty sta­tion are greet­ed by Lenin.

21

1861 -- Jef­fer­son Davis re­signs from the U.S. Se­nate, af­ter down­siz­ing of the Union makes his po­si­tion ob­so­lete.

22

1506 -- The Swiss Guard be­gins its fierce, faith­ful and stylish de­fense of the Vat­i­can.

23

1968 -- USS Pue­blo be­gins its on­go­ing oc­cu­pa­tion of North Korea.

24

2003 -- U.S. Dept. of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cial­ly be­gins se­cur­ing free­dom, with the help of duct tape and oth­er de­vices.

25

1858 -- Men­delssohn's Wed­ding March be­comes a Vic­to­ri­an fad which fails to die along with the era.

26

1992 -- Rus­sia ceas­es to aim its nu­cle­ar weapons at U.S. cities, point­ing them to the sub­urbs in­stead.

27

1951 -- Lu­naform­ing of Ne­va­da Test Site be­gins, us­ing nu­cle­ar weapons for ex­pe­di­en­cy. The area is lat­er used for films pro­mot­ing moon col­o­niza­tion.

28

1909 -- U.S. oc­cu­pa­tion force de­parts from Cu­ba, leav­ing Guan­tanamo Bay Naval Base as the lone fu­ture out­post of democ­ra­cy.

29

A.D. 904 -- Start of the reign of Pope Sergius III, in­volved in a com­plex for­mu­la of both a slain pope and an­tipope, re-ex­e­cu­tion of a dead pope, and the birth of a fu­ture pope, with the fi­nal sum of ze­ro.

30

1661 -- Dead Charles I of Eng­land fi­nal­ly gets his re­venge on dead Oliv­er Cromwell via post-mortem post-mortem ex­e­cu­tion.

31

1990 -- The first McDon­ald's restau­rant in the Sovi­et Union opens, has­ten­ing its down­fall.