Holidays Calendar for January 4, 2027
January 4 is Independence Day in Myanmar (formerly Burma) that is observed every year since 1948. That's the day when Myanmar became independent from Britain and changed its name into Union of Burma.
January 4 is Day of the Martyrs of Independence, the national holiday in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and it commemorates several hundred people who died in a peaceful march.
World Hypnotism Day is celebrated annually on January 4. It was created by professional hypnotists to combat the many misconceptions and myths surrounding hypnosis and hypnotherapy while promoting their benefits.
Cavalry Day in Thailand is celebrated on January 4. This annual holiday was inaugurated to highlight the important role that cavalry has always played in the Royal Thai Army.
Isaac Newton was a renowned English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian, and author who is widely considered to be one of the most influential scientists of all time. Thanks to his enormous contribution to science Newton, alongside Albert Einstein, became a scientific icon. To celebrate his work, many scientists, science communicators, educators and science enthusiasts celebrate his birthday, and not once, but twice a year.
January 4 is Colonial Repression Martyrs' Day in Angola, a very important holiday in the history of national liberation struggle against the Portuguese colonial occupation.
Ogoni Day is an annual observance celebrated in Nigeria on January 4. It was initiated by the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People to highlight the struggle of the indigenous Ogoni people and promote their rights.
National Spaghetti Day is celebrated by Americans every year on January 4. If you're nuts for pasta, don't miss the chance to cook it in Italian way on National Spaghetti Day.
January 4 is a great day to play Trivial Pursuit, host a trivia night for your friends, or participate in a pub quiz because it is National Trivia Day. This amazing holiday was created to recognize tidbits of information that are considered to be of little value.
January 4 is World Braille Day. This annual observance was established to commemorate the birth anniversary of Louis Braille, a French educator famous for inventing a tactile writing system used by the blind and the visually impaired.
This Day in History
- 2013 Died: Tony Lip, American actor. He is best known as the actor who played crime boss Carmine Lupertazzi in the series The Sopranos.
- 2010 Died: Casey Johnson, American model and actress. She is known as the co-founder of Johnson & Johnson.
- 2010 Burj Khalifa was officially opened in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. As of 2023, Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world.
- 2007 The 110th United States Congress elected Nancy Pelosi as the first female speaker of the House in U.S. history.
- 2005 Born: Dafne Keen, Spanish-Britsh actress whose breakthrough performance was the role of Laura in Logan. She is also known for starring as Lyra Belacqua in the television series His Dark Materials.
- 2004 A NASA Mars rover Spirit landed successfully on Mars. In 2009, the rover got stuck and lost communication with Earth.
- 1998 Died: Mae Questel, American actress and vocal artist. She is best known for providing voices for the animated characters Betty Boop and Olive Oyl.
- 1998 Eastern Canada and northeastern United States were hit by the North American Ice Storm (also known as Great Ice Storm of 1998). It continued till January 10 and caused widespread damages to trees and electrical infrastructure.
- 1996 Born: Emma Mackey, British and French actress whose breakthrough performance as Maeve Wiley in the Netflix comedy-drama series Sex Education earned her a BAFTA nomination.
- 1990 The passenger train collided with an empty freight train in Pakistan. This train accident resulted in 307 deaths and 700 injuries.
- 1980 Born: D'Arcy Carden, American actress and comedian. She is best known for her portraying Janet in the NBC sitcom The Good Place, which earned her an Emmy nomination.
- 1972 Rose Heilbron became the first female judge to sit at the Old Bailey in London. She was also the first woman who led in a murder case.
- 1970 Tonghai County, China, was struck by an earthquake that had a magnitude of 7.7. It killed at least 15,000 people that made it the deadliest earthquake in a decade.
- 1965 Died: Thomas Stearns Eliot, American-English poet, playwright, critic, and Nobel Prize laureate. His poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock attracted widespread attention and is now regarded as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement.
- 1964 Born: Dot-Marie Jones, American actress and retired athlete who has had multiple roles in television. One of her best known roles is Coach Beiste on Glee.
- 1963 Born: Till Lindemann, German musician, poet and actor. He is mostly known as the frontman of Rammstein, a German industrial metal band.
- 1961 Born: Graham McTavish, Scottish actor and author. He is known for his roles as Dwalin in The Hobbit film trilogy, The Saint of Killers in Preacher, and Dougal MacKenzie and William Buccleigh MacKenzie in Outlander.
- 1961 Died: Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian physicist and Nobel Prize laureate. He developed a lot of of fundamental results in the field of quantum theory and formed the wave equation.
- 1960 Died: French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history
- 1958 Born: Matt Frewer, American actor. His credits include roles in the television series PSI Factor, Watchmen, Doctor Doctor, The Stand, and more.
- 1958 Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, fell down to Earth from its orbit.
- 1941 Died: Henri Bergson, French philosopher, Nobel Prize laureate. He is best known for convincing many thinkers that the process of immediate experience and intuition is more significant than abstract rationalism and the science of understanding reality.
- 1922 Born: Mart Port, Estonian architect. He is notable for heading many statutory plans of Tallinn, Tartu, Pärnu and Viljandi. His individual objects include the Viru Hotel, the building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia, the "Planners' House" and World War II memorial in Maarjamäe.
- 1912 The Scout Association was formed by a royal charter under the name The Boy Scouts Association. Today this association is the largest scouting organization in the UK.
- 1894 Born: Manuel Dias de Abreu, Brazilian physician and scientist. He is known as the inventor of chest photofluorography, a rapid radiography method of lung screening for tuberculosis.
- 1890 Born: Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, American pulp writer and publisher. He founded Wheeler-Nicholson's National Allied Publications that later evolved to DC Comics, one of the world's two largest comic book publishers.
- 1874 Born: Josef Suk, Czech composer and violinist. One of his most prominent works was Symphony No. 2 in C minor "Asrael" (1905-1906).
- 1865 The New York Stock Exchange opened its first permanent headquarters at 10-12 Broad Street near Wall Street in New York.
- 1821 Died: Elizabeth Ann Seton, American saint. She founded the Sisters of Charity, the first American congregation of religious sisters.
- 1813 Born: Isaac Pitman, English linguist. He is known for developing the most widely used system of shorthand (Pitman shorthand).
- 1809 Born: Louis Braille, French educator. He invented the system that the blind or visually impaired could use to read and write.
- 1786 Died: Moses Mendelssohn, German philosopher. He inspired the Haskalah ("Jewish enlightenment") movement in 18th-century Germany.
- 1785 Born: Jacob Grimm, German author and philologist. He is known as the discoverer of Grimm's Law in linguistics and the author (together with his brother Wilhelm) of the Grimm's Fairy Tales.
- 1710 Born: Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Italian composer, violinist, and organist. He is considered as one of the most important early composers of opera buffa.
- 1698 Died: Ange-Jacques Gabriel, French architect. He is known as the designer of École Militaire (Military School) in Paris. He was the most prominent French architect of his generation.