Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/January 1

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 * 1068 – Having been pardoned by Eudokia Makrembolitissa, the regent of the Byzantine Empire, for attempting to usurp the throne, Romanos IV Diogenes married her to become Byzantine emperor.
 * 1739 – Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic Ocean, the most remote island in the world, was discovered by French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier.
 * 1773 – The hymn "Amazing Grace" was probably first used in a prayer meeting in Olney, England, without the music familiar to modern listeners.
 * 1776 – American Revolutionary War: The town of Norfolk, Virginia, was burned and destroyed by the combined actions of British and Whig forces.
 * 1785 – The Times began publication in London as The Daily Universal Register.
 * 1800 – Quasi-War: An American convoy of four merchant vessels escorted by a schooner was attacked by a squadron of armed barges manned by Haitians.
 * 1801 – Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the dwarf planet Ceres, naming it after the Roman goddess of agriculture and of motherly love.
 * 1892 – The immigration station on Ellis Island (pictured) in New York Harbor opened, and would process almost 12 million immigrants to the United States over the course of its existence.
 * 1915 – Russia withdraws from its occupation of northwestern Iran, enabling a subsequent Ottoman invasion and massacres of Assyrians and Armenians.
 * 1928 – Joseph Stalin's personal secretary, Boris Bazhanov, crossed the Iranian border and defected from the Soviet Union.
 * 1945 – World War II: In retaliation for the massacre of captured Americans by Waffen SS soldiers, U.S. Army personnel killed an estimated 80 Wehrmacht prisoners near Chenogne, Belgium.
 * 1945 – Second World War: The Luftwaffe launched Operation Bodenplatte in an attempt to cripple Allied air forces in the Low Countries.
 * 1965 – The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, which later helped the country become a republic, was founded.
 * 1998 – Argentinian physicist Juan Maldacena published a landmark paper initiating the study of AdS/CFT correspondence, which links string theory and quantum gravity.
 * 2007 – Adam Air Flight 574 crashed into the sea off Polewali, Indonesia, killing all 102 people on board, when the pilots inadvertently disconnected the autopilot.
 * 2010 – A suicide bomber killed 105 spectators at a volleyball game in the Lakki Marwat District of Pakistan.
 * 2011 – A suicide bombing took place outside a Coptic Orthodox Church in Alexandria, Egypt, following a New Year service, killing 23 people.
 * Born/died this day: | Lorenzo de' Medici |b|1449| Betsy Ross |b|1752| Maria Edgeworth |b|1768| Eugène-Anatole Demarçay |b|1852| Wilhelm Canaris |b|1887| Alfred Ely Beach |d|1896|  Gary Johnson |b|1953| Betty Archdale |d|2000| Shirley Chisholm |d|2005 Lhasa de Sela |d|2010| Nay Win Maung |d|2012