The Best New Years Ever

Out with the old and in with the new! Outgoing years are marked by celebration and commemoration, while incoming years are met with hopeful anticipation and expectation. From time to time an extraordinarily appropriate event takes place on New Years, as if planned to coincide with the theme of the festivities. The world should not soon forget the events that make up the best New Years ever. Following is a list of New Years events that were met with hopeful anticipation and expectation on the grandest of scales.

On December 31, 1991, The USSR was officially dissolved. The Russian Revolution of 1917 came to an end as former Soviet citizens rang in the new year under new flags. What great celebrations of new freedom must have marked that New Years. Imagine fourteen new countries with their first New Years to celebrate.

On December 31, 1946, Harry S. Truman held a press conference in his offices at 10:30 AM. In this press conference he announced a "cessation of hostilities of World War II, effective twelve o'clock noon, December 31, 1946." After making the announcement and explaining that this was not a termination to the state of emergency or the state or war (those would be carried out by congress), he wished them a happy New Year with these words: "Ladies and gentlemen, I just want to wish you a Happy New Year, and hope you will enjoy it, and that we will see you again maybe about Thursday afternoon at 4 o'clock. I suppose you will be awake by then."

On January 1, 1942, Twenty-six nations signed the Declaration by the United Nations, each one of them agreeing "to employ its full resources, military or economic" in "the struggle for victory over Hitlerism". This is the beginning of the United Nations as we now know it. Before this day, these were known as the Allied countries. As time went on, many other nations have joined the United Nations, but this is how it all started. The Big Four: China, Russia, Britain, and the United States, actually met the day before, and then presented the Declaration to the full group on the following day.

On January 1, 1892, Ellis Island opens to process it's first immigrant. According to the Library of Congress web site "Today in History" the first immigrant in line was Annie Moore, a fifteen year old girl from Ireland. For the next sixty-two years, Ellis Island Immigration Station becomes, like New Years Day, a time and place of beginning for over twelve million immigrants. It is said that over 40% of Americans have ancestors that were processed through Ellis Island upon arrival to the United States. Along with the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island became the best known symbol of the acceptance of immigrants for which America is known.

On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and the country took a giant step forward in it's progression toward the abolition of slavery . While the Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves everywhere in the United States, it was the first big step in that direction. Certainly it must have initiated some hopeful expectation and anticipation of a better future among those who had waited for so long.

January 1, 1808, United States bans importation of slaves. On March 2, 1807, Thomas Jefferson signed a bill which banned the importation of slaves into the United States. The act, titled "An act to prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, from and after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eight." Anti-slavery advocates had been waiting to initiate legislation for twenty years, since the Constitution spelled out that time period as a protected era for the slave states.

Sources:
Soviet Union legally ceases to exist, Encyclopaedia Britannica.
The President's News Conference on the Termination of Hostilities, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum.
Charter of the United Nations: Photo Resources, Audiovisual Library of International Law.
Ellis Island, nps.com.
Today in History: January 1, The Library of Congress: American Memory.
The Emancipation Proclamation, National Archives and Records Administration: Featured Documents.
An Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves, Yale Law School, The Avalon Project.