49 B.C.: Julius Caesar is declared by Rome’s Senate to be an enemy of the state, triggering Caesar’s start of Greek civil war and his dictatorial rule before his assassination in 44 BC. Caesar would become known as an arrogant leader who centralized government control but nonetheless cleaned up Rome’s streets, led the country to a more practical calendar, and enacted other improvements
Clockwise from left: Julius Caesar, former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, the Harlem Globetrotters, the Human Rights Campaign’s image in support of the International Day to End Conversion Therapy, and the solidarity slogan Je Suis Charlie.
1822: The first new American immigrants to what would become Liberia. arrive in the South African region, as part of the American Colonization Society movement that encouraged former slaves to leave the United States and found their own country. Overall, almost 20,000 Black Americans and Caribbeans move to Liberia, which becomes the first African Republican to declare its independence 25 years later.
1927: The Harlem Globetrotters play their first game in Hinckley, Ill., (below) under their original name of the Chicago GlobeTrotters, two years before they move to New York City. The five players who founded the entertainment-based basketball team were actually from Chicago and known as the Savoy Boys. Today, the team has played over 26,000 games in 127 countries.
1955: Marian Anderson becomes the first Black person to perform at the Metropolitan Opera, in a show that was years in the making. Anderson had avoided the opera because, despite her classical training and experience performing in front of large crowds, she coubted hr own background.
1983: The CDC publishes reports of the first cases of AIDS in women, in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The reports are considered the first evidence that HIV is not transmitted exclusively by or among gay men.
1999: The impeachment trail of President Bill Clinton begins in the U.S. Senate, which will eventually acquit him. Clinton had been impeached by the House of Representatives days earlier for lying about whether he had sexual relations with White House staffer Monica Lewinsky.
2002: America’s first Black mayor of a major southern city takes office. Shirley Franklin was elected mayor of Atlanta, Ga., and served two terms, before shifting into a career as a professor, public speaker and civil rights leader.
2013: An estimated 181 gay service members who were discharged under the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy that ended in 2010 will receive full back pay, under a settlement agreement between the Department of Defense and the ACLU.
2015: The Charlie Hebdo Attack in Paris claims 12 people in the headquarters of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, shortly after the magazine published images of Muhammad. The killers are identified as two brothers who were also Al Qaeda terrorists and are killed by police two days later in a shootout. In the two days after the attack, the brothers kill several others, and additional terrorist attacks take place throughout Paris. The murders inspire the slogan, “Je Suis Charlie” in solidarity.
2021: Congress certifies Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election, one day after Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol in the January 6 Insurrection, attempting to stop the validation of Biden’s win. Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election, congress meets to do just that, making the win official. Congress also voted to overturn challenges to Biden victories in several states.
2022: January 7 is declared the International Day to End Conversion Therapy, in honor of Canada’s new law banning the practice, defined as seeking to change someone’s gender identity or sexual orientation through coercive or manipulative
2025: Meta, the new name for Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, announces it will replace third-party fact-checkers with “community notes” similar to those championed by Elon Musk on X. The announcement follow’s Meta’s donation of $1 million to the Trump campaign, and years of attacks from conservatives over COVID-era content monitoring.the company in charge of third party fact checking
