January 3 is the third day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 362 days remaining until the end of the year. Perihelion, the point during the year when the Earth is closest to the Sun, occurs around this date.
1521 – Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther in the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem.
1653 – By the Coonan Cross Oath, the Eastern Church in India cuts itself off from colonial Portuguese tutelage.
1749 – Benning Wentworth issues the first of the New Hampshire Grants, leading to the establishment of Vermont.
1749 – The first issue of Berlingske, Denmark's oldest continually operating newspaper, is published.
1777 – American General George Washington defeats British General Lord Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton.
1815 – Austria, the United Kingdom, and France form a secret defensive alliance against Prussia and Russia.
1823 – Stephen F. Austin receives a grant of land in Texas from the government of Mexico.
1833 – The United Kingdom claims sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.[1]
1848 – Joseph Jenkins Roberts is sworn in as the first president of Liberia.
1861 – American Civil War: Delaware votes not to secede from the United States.
1868 – Meiji Restoration in Japan: The Tokugawa shogunate is abolished; agents of Satsuma and Chōshū seize power.
1870 – Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge begins.
1871 – Battle of Bapaume, a battle in the Franco-Prussian war occurs.
1885 – Sino-French War: Beginning of the Battle of Núi Bop
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.
1911 – A magnitude 7.7 earthquake destroys the city of Almaty in Russian Turkestan.
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.
1913 – An Atlantic coast storm sets the lowest confirmed barometric pressure reading for a non-tropical system in the continental United States.
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.
1925 – Benito Mussolini announces he is taking dictatorial powers over Italy.
1932 – Martial law is declared in Honduras to stop a revolt by banana workers fired by the United Fruit Company.
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.
1938 – The March of Dimes is established as a foundation to combat infant polio by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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.
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.
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.
1947 – Proceedings of the U.S. Congress are televised for the first time.
1949 – The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the central bank of the Philippines, is established.
1953 – Frances P. Bolton and her son, Oliver from Ohio, become the first mother and son to serve simultaneously in the U.S. Congress.
1956 – A fire damages the top part of the Eiffel Tower.
1957 – The Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch.
1958 – The West Indies Federation is formed.
1959 – Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state.
1961 – Cold War: The United States severs diplomatic relations with Cuba over the latter's nationalization of American assets.
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.
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.
1962 – Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro.
1976 – International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights entered into force.
1977 – Apple Computer is incorporated.
1990 – United States invasion of Panama: Manuel Noriega, former leader of Panama, surrenders to American forces.
1993 – In Moscow, Russia, George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin sign the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).
1994 – More than seven million people from the former apartheid Homelands receive South African citizenship.
1999 – The Mars Polar Lander is launched by NASA.
2000 – Final daily edition of the Peanuts comic strip.
2002 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: Israeli forces seize the Palestinian freighter Karine A in the Red Sea, finding 50 tons of weapons.
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.
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.
2015 – Boko Haram militants raze the entire town of Baga in north-east Nigeria, starting the Baga massacre and killing as many as 2,000 people.
2016 – Following the fallout caused by the execution of Nimr al-Nimr, Iran ends its diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia.
2018 – Computer analysts report two major security vulnerabilities, named "Meltdown" and "Spectre," affecting the microprocessors of almost all computers in the world.
