Today in History in 1938 Franklin D. Roosevelt establishes the March of Dimes and in 2000 the last original weekday Peanuts comic strip is published.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

January 3 is the third day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 362 days remaining until the end of the year (363 in leap years).

EVENTS

1496 – Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tests a flying machine.

1521 – Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther.

1749 – The first issue of the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende is published.

1777 – American general George Washington defeats a British–Hessian Army under Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis in the Battle of Princeton.

1795 – Catherine II of Russia and Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor complete a treaty agreeing to the Third Partition of Poland.

1815 – Austria, the United Kingdom and France form a secret defensive alliance against Prussia and Russia.

1823 – Stephen A. Austin receives a grant of land in Texas from the Mexican government.

1848 – Joseph Jenkins Roberts is sworn in as the first President of Liberia.

1851 – French physicist Jean Bernard Léon Foucault experiments with the Foucault pendulum to prove that the Earth rotates.

1861 – Delaware votes to remain in the United States, and not to secede.

1868 – Meiji Restoration in Japan.

1870 – Building work on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City begins.

1888 – The refracting telescope at the Lick Observatory near San Jose, California, measuring 91 centimeters (36 in) in diameter, is used for the first time. It was the world's largest telescope at the time.

1901–2000

1908 – The Kaziranga National Park is created in Assam, northeastern India.

1911 – A magnitude 7.7 earthquake destroys Almaty in present–day Kazakhstan.

1918 – Finland officially gains independence from the Russian Empire.

1919 – Paris Peace Conference: Emir Faisal of Iraq and Chaim Weizmann agree to develop a Jewish homeland in Palestine and an Arab nation in the Middle East.

1925 – Benito Mussolini declares that he is taking dictatorial powers in Italy.

1932 – Martial law is declared in Honduras to stop a revolt by banana workers who had been fired by the United Fruit Company.

1934 – A mine explosion at Ossegg, Bohemia, kills 142 people.

1938 – Franklin D. Roosevelt establishes the March of Dimes.

1945 – Admiral Chester W. Nimitz is placed in command of all US naval forces in preparation for planned attacks against Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

1956 – Fire damages the top part of the Eiffel Tower.

1957 – The Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch.

1958 – The West Indies Federation is formed.

1959 – Alaska becomes the 49th state of the United States. William Egan becomes the first State Governor of Alaska.

1959 – Separatists in the Maldives declare the creation of the United Suvadive Republic.

1961 – Aero Flight 311 crashes near Kavelax, Finland, killing all 25 people on board.

1961 – The United States ends diplomatic relations with Cuba.

1962 – Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro.

1976 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights comes into effect.

1977 – Apple Computer is incorporated.

1980 – Francisco de Sa Carneiro becomes Prime Minister of Portugal.

1987 – Aretha Franklin is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

1990 – Panama's leader Manuel Noriega surrenders to United States forces.

1992 – The United States and Russia officially establish diplomatic relations.

1993 – In Moscow, George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin sign the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

1994 – More than 7 million people from the former apartheid homelands receive South African citizenship.

1994 – A Tupolev Tu–154 of Baikal Air crashes near Irkutsk, Siberia, killing all 148 people on board.

1999 – The Mars Polar Lander is launched to Mars.

2000 – The last original weekday Peanuts comic strip is published.

2004 – Flash Airlines Flight 604, a Boeing 737, crashes into the Red Sea off Egypt, killing 148 people.

2007 – Kenya closes the border with Somalia and deports Somali refugees.

2009 – The first part of the decentralized payment system Bitcoin, called the Genesis Block, is established by the creator of the system, Satoshi Nakamoto.

2011 – Jerry Brown replaces Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California.

2015 – Boko Haram militants enter Baga in Northern Nigeria and kill up to 2,000 people in the coming days.

2018 – Computer analysts report two major security vulnerabilities named "Meltdown" and "Spectre", affecting the microprocessors of all the computers in the world.