HISTORY & TIMELINE

2 January

A journey through
2 January in history

The second day of the year has seen a Soviet probe become the first spacecraft to escape Earth’s pull, an American craft catch the dust of a comet, Wagner’s ghost ship sail into Dresden and a group of young engineers meet in a London coffee house. This timeline follows 2 January from sixth-century Rome to the twenty-first century.

Begin the Timeline ↓ ← Back to Explore This Day

EARLIEST RECORDS

Ancient & Early History

The earliest worthwhile records and events connected with this date.

533

The marble choir screens of the Basilica of San Clemente in Rome, where the future Pope John II served as a priest.Image: Matthias Holländer at German Wikipedia · Public domain

culture · Europe

The first pope to take a new name

Mercurius was a Roman priest of the church of San Clemente. When he was elected Bishop of Rome on 2 January 533, he decided that a man named after the pagan god Mercury should not lead the Church, and he took the name of an earlier pope, John. He was the first pope known to change his name. The custom did not take hold at once, but by the end of the first millennium it had become the rule, and almost every pope since has chosen a new name on election. Memorials of ‘John, called Mercurius’ survive at San Clemente.

Source: Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent): Pope John II ↗

THE MIDDLE AGES

Medieval History

Kingdoms, conflict, faith, power and the changing medieval world.

1492

The Surrender of Granada, painted by Francisco Pradilla in 1882: Muhammad XII hands over the city to Ferdinand and Isabella.Image: Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz · Public domain

politics · Europe

Granada surrenders and Muslim rule in Spain ends

For more than two centuries the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, with its palace-fortress of the Alhambra, was the last Muslim state in the Iberian Peninsula. From 1482 Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile waged a ten-year war against it, town by town, until only the city itself was left. After a long siege from the camp the Catholic Monarchs built at Santa Fe, the last king, Muhammad XII, known to the Spanish as Boabdil, handed over Granada on 2 January 1492. It brought nearly eight centuries of Muslim rule in Spain to an end. Within months the Jews of Spain were ordered to convert or leave, and the promises of religious freedom made to Granada’s Muslims were broken within a decade.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Muhammad XII (Boabdil) ↗

III

A CHANGING WORLD

Early Modern Era

Exploration, political change, scientific development and expanding global connections.

1788

Abraham Baldwin’s printed draft of the US Constitution, with his marginal notes, held by the Georgia Historical Society.Image: Brendanghs · CC BY-SA 4.0

politics · Americas

Georgia ratifies the US Constitution

The Constitution drafted in Philadelphia in 1787 needed the approval of nine of the thirteen states. Meeting in Augusta, a Georgia convention ratified it on 2 January 1788, making Georgia the fourth state to do so, after Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Georgia was then a thinly settled frontier state. Its leaders hoped a stronger national government would help them in their conflict with the Muscogee (Creek) nation, which still claimed much of the state’s land. Two Georgians, Abraham Baldwin and William Few, had signed the Constitution in Philadelphia.

Source: New Georgia Encyclopedia: Georgia Constitution ↗

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The 1800s

Industry, empire, invention, reform and a century of enormous transformation.

1818

The library of the Institution of Civil Engineers at One Great George Street, London.Image: Andy Mabbett · CC BY-SA 3.0

science · Europe

Young engineers found the Institution of Civil Engineers

On 2 January 1818 a handful of young engineers, the oldest in his early thirties, met at the Kendal Coffee House in Fleet Street, London, and founded the Institution of Civil Engineers. It was the world’s first professional body for engineers. It grew only slowly until Thomas Telford, builder of roads, canals and bridges, became its first president in 1820.

Source: Institution of Civil Engineers: ICE archives (minutes of the first meeting) ↗

1843

A page of the overture to The Flying Dutchman in Wagner’s own hand, about 1843.Image: Richard Wagner · Public domain

culture · Europe

Wagner’s Flying Dutchman opens in Dresden

Richard Wagner’s opera Der fliegende Holländer, The Flying Dutchman, was first performed at the court opera in Dresden on 2 January 1843, with Wagner himself conducting. It tells the legend of a sea captain cursed to sail for ever unless he finds a woman who will be faithful to him until death. The storm-tossed music owed something to Wagner’s own rough voyage across the North Sea in 1839. The opening was only a modest success, but it is the earliest of his operas still regularly staged, and it pointed the way to the music dramas that followed.

Source: Metropolitan Opera: Der fliegende Holländer, the opera’s plot and creation ↗

1863

Samuel Beatty’s Union brigade advancing at Stones River; an engraving published in 1887 from a wartime sketch.Image: Edwin J Meeker, from a sketch by Alfred Edward Matthews. Credit found on p. 20 of the PDF; a list of artists and engravers is on p. 23. · Public domain

world · Americas

The Battle of Stones River ends

The Battle of Stones River, near Murfreesboro in Tennessee, began on 31 December 1862. On its last day, 2 January 1863, a Confederate charge across open fields was broken by massed Union artillery, and Braxton Bragg’s army withdrew. The battle cost some 24,000 casualties. Coming after the Union defeat at Fredericksburg, it gave Abraham Lincoln a victory he badly needed.

Source: National Park Service: the Battle of Stones River ↗

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The 1900s

War and peace, technological leaps, social change, politics, sport and popular culture.

1905

203 Metre Hill above Port Arthur, the height whose capture let the Japanese guns reach the harbour; photographed in 1909.Image: Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff · Public domain

world · Asia

Russia surrenders Port Arthur to Japan

Port Arthur, at the tip of China’s Liaodong Peninsula, was Russia’s naval base on the Pacific. Japan attacked it in February 1904, opening the Russo-Japanese War, and from the summer General Nogi Maresuke’s army laid siege to it, losing tens of thousands of men in assaults on the hills around the town. Once Japanese guns on 203 Metre Hill could fire down on the harbour, the Russian fleet was destroyed at anchor. On 2 January 1905 the commander, General Anatoly Stessel, surrendered, though his garrison still had food and ammunition. The fall of the base, followed by defeats at Mukden and Tsushima, pushed Russia to accept peace talks later that year.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Battle of Port Arthur ↗

1959

A 1959 Soviet stamp dated 2.1.1959, showing the path of the ‘Soviet cosmic rocket’ towards the Moon.Image: Post of USSR · Public domain

science · Global

Luna 1 escapes the pull of the Earth

On 2 January 1959 the Soviet Union launched Luna 1 towards the Moon. The rocket’s upper stage burned longer than planned, and the probe missed the Moon by about 6,000 kilometres, passing it two days later. Even so it made history: it was the first spacecraft to reach escape velocity and leave the Earth’s gravity behind, and it went into orbit around the Sun, where it still is. On the way it found that the Moon has no strong magnetic field and measured the solar wind.

Source: NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive: Luna 1 ↗

1963

A stamp issued by the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam to mark its victory at Ap Bac.Image: Government of Vietnam · Public domain

world · Asia

The Viet Cong win the Battle of Ap Bac

On 2 January 1963 South Vietnamese troops, with American advisers and helicopters, attacked a Viet Cong battalion near the village of Ap Bac in the Mekong Delta. Although outnumbered and surrounded, the guerrillas shot down five helicopters, killed about 80 South Vietnamese soldiers and three Americans, and slipped away. It was their first major victory, and it raised doubts in Washington about the South Vietnamese army.

Source: US Army University Press: the Battle of Ap Bac, Vietnam (staff ride) ↗

1971

Ibrox Stadium, the home of Rangers, seen from the Glasgow Science Centre Tower in 2008.Image: Kenneth Hall · CC BY-SA 2.0

sport · Europe

The Ibrox disaster

At the end of the New Year match between Rangers and Celtic in Glasgow on 2 January 1971, spectators leaving the ground fell on Stairway 13 at Ibrox Park. Sixty-six people died and more than 140 were injured. The inquiry that followed led to the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975 and to the rebuilding of Ibrox.

Source: National Library of Scotland: Scotland’s pages, 1971, the Ibrox disaster ↗

2000 TO TODAY

Modern Day

The events of recent decades that have already become part of the historical record.

2004

The nucleus of comet Wild 2, about five kilometres across, photographed by Stardust on 2 January 2004.Image: NASA · Public domain

science · Global

Stardust catches the dust of a comet

On 2 January 2004 NASA’s Stardust spacecraft flew about 240 kilometres from the nucleus of comet Wild 2, far beyond the orbit of Mars. It held out a collector like a tennis racket filled with aerogel, a very light glassy foam, to catch grains of dust streaming off the comet. It also took the sharpest pictures of a comet’s nucleus yet. Two years later its capsule parachuted into the Utah desert, bringing back the first material ever collected from a comet, grains that turned out to include minerals formed near the young Sun.

Source: NASA APPEL: tenth anniversary of Stardust’s encounter with comet Wild 2 ↗

RESEARCH

Sources & Further Reading

Selected authoritative references supporting the events on this page.

WHY THESE MOMENTS?

Significance before volume

This page is not the longest possible list of events. It is a chronological journey through 2 January, where each entry is chosen for historical significance, human interest and reliability.

Facts are checked against authoritative museums, archives, universities and reference works. Where sources disagree, the page says so.

EXPLORED THE DEEPER STORY?

Return to the highlights of 2 January

Discover the lighter side of the date with famous birthdays, culture, firsts and lives remembered.

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