It is known by a collection of names including: Saint Sylvester's Day, New Year's Eve or Old Year's Day/Night, as the following day is New Year's Day. It is the last day of the year; the following day is January 1, the first day of the following year.
Events Pre-1600 406 – Vandals, Alans and Suebians cross the Rhine, beginning an invasion of Gaul. 535 – Byzantine general Belisarius completes the conquest of Sicily, defeating the Gothic garrison of Palermo (Panormos), and ending his consulship for the year. 870 – Battle of Englefield: The Vikings clash with ealdorman Æthelwulf of Berkshire. The invaders are driven back to Reading (East Anglia); many Danes are killed. 1105 – Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV is forced to abdicate in favor of his son, Henry V, in Ingelheim. 1225 – The Lý dynasty of Vietnam ends after 216 years by the enthronement of the boy emperor Trần Thái Tông, husband of the last Lý monarch, Lý Chiêu Hoàng, starting the Trần dynasty.Minh, Nguyen. The Contributions of Salient Vietnamese Zen Masters to the Development of Buddhism During Ly and Tran Dynasties. 2017. Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University. Master of Arts. 1229 – James I the Conqueror, King of Aragon, enters Medina Mayurqa (now known as Palma de Mallorca, Spain), thus consummating the Christian reconquest of the island of Mallorca. 1501 – The First Battle of Cannanore commences, seeing the first use of the naval line of battle. 1600 – The British East India Company is chartered.
1601–1900 1660 – James, Duke of York is named Duke of Normandy by Louis XIV of France. 1670 – The expedition of John Narborough leaves Corral Bay, having surveyed the coast and lost four hostages to the Spanish. 1687 – The first Huguenots set sail from France to the Cape of Good Hope. 1757 – Empress Elizabeth I of Russia issues her ukase incorporating Königsberg into Russia. 1759 – Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000-year lease at £45 per annum and starts brewing Guinness. 1775 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Quebec: British forces under General Guy Carleton repulse an attack by Continental Army General Richard Montgomery in a snowstorm. 1790 – Efimeris, the oldest Greek newspaper of which issues have survived till today, is published for the first time. 1796 – The incorporation of Baltimore as a city. 1831 – Gramercy Park is deeded to New York City. 1844 – The Philippines skipped this date in order to align the country with the rest of Asia, as the trading interest switched to China, Dutch East Indies and neighboring territories after Mexico gained independence from Spain on 27 September 1821. In the islands, Monday, 30 December 1844 was immediately followed by Wednesday, 1 January 1845. 1853 – A dinner party is held inside a life-size model of an iguanodon created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and Sir Richard Owen in south London, England. 1857 – Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa, then a small logging town, as the capital of the Province of Canada. 1862 – American Civil War: The three-day Battle of Stones River begins near Murfreesboro, Tennessee between the Confederate Army of Tennessee under General Braxton Bragg and the Union Army of the Cumberland under General William S. Rosecrans. 1862 – American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln signs an enabling act that would admit West Virginia to the Union, thus dividing Virginia in two.; 1878 – Karl Benz, working in Mannheim, Germany, files for a patent on his first reliable two-stroke gas engine. He was granted the patent in 1879. 1879 – Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time, in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
1901–present 1906 – Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar signs the Persian Constitution of 1906. 1907 – The first ever ball drop in Times Square. 1942 – USS Essex, first aircraft carrier of a 24-ship class, is commissioned. 1942 – World War II: The Royal Navy defeats the Kriegsmarine at the Battle of the Barents Sea. This leads to the resignation of Grand Admiral Erich Raeder a month later. 1944 – World War II: Operation Nordwind, the last major Wehrmacht offensive on the Western Front, begins. 1946 – President Harry S. Truman officially proclaims the end of hostilities in World War II. 1951 – Cold War: The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than US$13.3 billion in foreign aid to rebuild Western Europe. 1955 – General Motors becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over US$1 billion in a year. 1956 – The Romanian Television network begins its first broadcast in Bucharest. 1961 – RTÉ, Ireland's state broadcaster, launches its first national television service. 1963 – The Central African Federation officially collapses, subsequently becoming Zambia, Malawi and Rhodesia. 1965 – Jean-Bédel Bokassa, leader of the Central African Republic army, and his military officers begin a coup d'état against the government of President David Dacko. 1968 – The first flight of the Tupolev Tu-144, the first civilian supersonic transport in the world. 1968 – MacRobertson Miller Airlines Flight 1750 crashes near Port Hedland, Western Australia, killing all 26 people on board. 1981 – A coup d'état in Ghana removes President Hilla Limann's PNP government and replaces it with the Provisional National Defence Council led by Flight lieutenant Jerry Rawlings. 1983 – The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States Government. 1983 – Benjamin Ward is appointed New York City Police Department's first ever African American police commissioner. 1983 – In Nigeria, a coup d'état led by Major General Muhammadu Buhari ends the Second Nigerian Republic. 1986 – Three disgruntled employees set fire to the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, killing more than 90 people and injuring 140 others, making it the second-deadliest hotel fire in American history. 1991 – All official Soviet Union institutions have ceased operations by this date, five days after the Soviet Union is officially dissolved. 1992 – Czechoslovakia is peacefully dissolved in what is dubbed by media as the Velvet Divorce, resulting in the creation of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. 1994 – This date is skipped altogether in Kiribati as the Phoenix Islands and Line Islands change time zones from UTC−11:00 to UTC+13:00 and UTC−10:00 to UTC+14:00, respectively. 1994 – The First Chechen War: The Russian Ground Forces begin a New Year's storming of Grozny. 1995 – The final comic of Calvin and Hobbes is published.Watterson (2005). vol. 3, p. 481. Comic originally published December 31, 1995. 1998 – The European Exchange Rate Mechanism freezes the values of the legacy currencies in the Eurozone, and establishes the value of the euro currency. 1999 – The first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, resigns from office, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President and successor. 1999 – The U.S. government hands control of the Panama Canal (as well all the adjacent land to the canal known as the Panama Canal Zone) to Panama. This act complied with the signing of the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties. 1999 – Indian Airlines Flight 814 hijacking ends after seven days with the release of 190 survivors at Kandahar Airport, Afghanistan. 2001 – Rwanda adopts a new national flag and anthem. 2004 – The official opening of Taipei 101, the tallest skyscraper at that time in the world, standing at a height of . 2009 – Both a blue moon and a lunar eclipse occur. 2010 – Tornadoes touch down in midwestern and southern United States, including Washington County, Arkansas; Greater St. Louis, Sunset Hills, Missouri, Illinois, and Oklahoma, with a few tornadoes in the early hours. A total of 36 tornadoes touched down, resulting in the deaths of nine people and $113 million in damages. 2011 – NASA succeeds in putting the first of two Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory satellites in orbit around the Moon. 2014 – A New Year's Eve celebration stampede in Shanghai kills at least 36 people and injures 49 others. 2015 – A fire breaks out at the Downtown Address Hotel in Downtown Dubai, United Arab Emirates, located near the Burj Khalifa, two hours before the fireworks display is due to commence. Sixteen injuries were reported; one had a heart attack, another suffered a major injury, and fourteen others with minor injuries. 2018 – Thirty-nine people are killed after a ten-story building collapses in the industrial city of Magnitogorsk, Russia. 2019 – The World Health Organization is informed of cases of pneumonia with an unknown cause, detected in Wuhan. This later turned out to be COVID-19, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic. 2020 – The World Health Organization issues its first emergency use validation for a COVID-19 vaccine.
Births
Pre-1600 695 – Muhammad ibn al-Qasim, Umayyad general (died 715) 1378 – Pope Callixtus III (died 1458) 1491 – Jacques Cartier, French navigator and explorer (died 1557) 1493 – Eleonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino (died 1570) 1504 – Beatrice of Portugal, Duchess of Savoy (died 1538) 1514 – Andreas Vesalius, Belgian anatomist, physician, and author (died 1564) 1539 – John Radcliffe, English politician (died 1568) 1550 – Henry I, Duke of Guise (died 1588) 1552 – Simon Forman, English occultist and astrologer (died 1611) 1572 – Emperor Go-Yōzei of Japan, (died 1617) 1585 – Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, Spanish general and politician, 24th Governor of the Duchy of Milan (died 1645)
1601–1900 1668 – Herman Boerhaave, Dutch botanist and physician (died 1738) 1714 – Arima Yoriyuki, Japanese mathematician and educator (died 1783) 1720 – Charles Edward Stuart, Scottish claimant to the throne of England (died 1788) 1738 – Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, English general and politician, 3rd Governor-General of India (died 1805) 1741 – Gottfried August Bürger, German poet and academic (died 1794) 1763 – Pierre-Charles Villeneuve, French admiral (died 1806) 1774 – James Bunbury White, American politician (died 1819) 1776 – Johann Spurzheim, German-American physician and phrenologist (died 1832) 1798 – Friedrich Robert Faehlmann, Estonian physician, philologist, and academic (died 1850) 1805 – Marie d'Agoult, German-French historian and author (died 1876) 1815 – George Meade, American general and engineer (died 1872) 1830 – Isma'il Pasha, Egyptian ruler (died 1895) 1830 – Alexander Smith, Scottish poet and critic (died 1867) 1833 – Hugh Nelson, Scottish-Australian politician, 11th Premier of Queensland (died 1906) 1834 – Queen Kapiolani of Hawaii (died 1899) 1838 – Émile Loubet, French lawyer and politician, 7th President of France (died 1929) 1842 – Giovanni Boldini, Italian painter (died 1931) 1851 – Henry Carter Adams, American economist and academic (died 1921) 1855 – Giovanni Pascoli, Italian poet and scholar (died 1912) 1857 – King Kelly, American baseball player and manager (died 1894) 1860 – Joseph S. Cullinan, American businessman, co-founder of Texaco (died 1937) 1864 – Robert Grant Aitken, American astronomer and academic (died 1951) 1869 – Henri Matisse, French painter and sculptor (died 1954) 1872 – Fred Marriott, American race car driver (died 1956) 1873 – Konstantin Konik, Estonian surgeon and politician, 19th Estonian Minister of Education (died 1936) 1874 – Julius Meier, American businessman and politician, 20th Governor of Oregon (died 1937) 1877 – Lawrence Beesley, English journalist and author (died 1967) 1878 – Elizabeth Arden, Canadian businesswoman (died 1966) 1878 – Horacio Quiroga, Uruguayan-Argentinian author, poet, and playwright (died 1937) 1880 – Fred Beebe, American baseball player and coach (died 1957) 1880 – George Marshall, American general and politician, 50th United States Secretary of State (died 1959) 1881 – Max Pechstein, German painter and academic (died 1955) 1884 – Bobby Byrne, American baseball and soccer player (died 1964) 1884 – Mihály Fekete, Hungarian actor, screenwriter, and film director (died 1960) 1885 – Princess Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein (died 1970)