Historical Events
Penny Post Starts
Jan 10 Uniform Penny Post mail system starts throughout the United Kingdom an idea championed by Rowland Hill to increase the volume of mail and its availability to poorer classes
- Jan 13 The steamship Lexington burns and sinks four miles off the coast of Long Island with the loss of 139 lives
- Jan 18 The Electro-Magnet, and Mechanics Intelligencer, 1st US electrical journal, appears
- Jan 20 Dumont D'Urville discovers Adélie Land, Antarctica
- Jan 20 Dutch King Willem II crowned
- Jan 22 New Zealand Company settlers arrive aboard the Aurora at Te Whanganui a Tara, which becomes Port Nicholson, Wellington
Wilkes Identifies Antarctica
Jan 25 American naval expedition under Charles Wilkes is first to identify Antarctica as a new continent
Hobson Arrives in NZ
Jan 29 First Governor of New Zealand and co-author of the Treaty of Waitangi Captain William Hobson arrives in the Bay of Islands, NZ
Famous Birthdays
- Jan 3 Saint Damien, [Joseph de Veuster], Belgian priest and missionary who helped lepers in Hawaii, born in Tremelo, Belgium (d. 1889)
- Jan 5 John Doby Kennedy, Brigadier General (Confederate Army), born in Camden, South Carolina (d. 1896)
- Jan 10 Louis Nazaire Bégin, French Canadian archbishop and cardinal, born in Lévis, Canada (d. 1925)
- Jan 18 Austin Dobson, English poet, critic and biographer, born in Plymouth, England (d. 1921)
- Jan 18 Ernst Rudorff, German pianist, composer, and teacher, born in Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia (d. 1916)
- Jan 21 Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake, English physician and feminist who was one of the first female medical students at a British university, born in Hastings, England (d. 1912)
- Jan 22 Ernest Roland Wilberforce, English bishop (d. 1907)
- Jan 23 Ernst Abbe, German physicist and optical scientist (Carl Zeiss Optics Company), born in Eisenach, Germany (d. 1905)
Famous Deaths
- Jan 6 Fanny Burney, English novelist (Camille, Evalina), dies at 87
- Jan 10 Princess Elizabeth of the United Kingdom, 7th child and 3rd daughter of King George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, dies at 69
- Jan 22 Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, German anthropologist (b. 1752)
- Jan 30 Juan Galindo, Irish-Honduran soldier, diplomat for Federal Republic of Central America and early Maya archaeologist, killed in battle at about 38
