Template:On this day - January 4

Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies

• 1493 – From Santo Domingo, on the island of Hispaniola (capital of the present-day Dominican Republic), Christopher Columbus and his crew begin the return voyage to Spain.
• 1698 – In Catalonia (Spain), under the Peace of Ryswick, the French troops of the Duke of Vendôme evacuate Barcelona.
• 1717 – The United Provinces of the Netherlands, England and France sign the Triple Alliance.
• 1805 – Spain and France sign an agreement of military and naval aid to invade Great Britain.
• 1817 – At the Catalán stream (present-day Uruguay), during the Luso-Brazilian invasion of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (present-day Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay), the Portuguese defeat the forces of General José Gervasio Artigas at the Battle of Catalán.
• 1823 – In Seville, the overflowing of the Guadalquivir River floods the entire city.
• 1825 – Death of Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, Spanish King of Naples and Sicily from 1759 to 1825 (b. 1751).
• 1834 – In Peru, the garrison of Lima stages a coup d'état and proclaims Pedro Bermúdez supreme chief, which starts the civil war.
• 1837 – Hipólito Bouchard, Argentine military officer and privateer born in France, is murdered by one of his slaves (b. 1780).
• 1845 – In Monterrey (Mexico), General Mariano Arista takes up arms in support of the movement rejecting the return to power of Antonio López de Santa Anna.
• 1857 – In Barcelona (Spain), the railroad line between Mataró and Arenys de Mar is opened.
• 1870 – In Buenos Aires, Bartolomé Mitre puts the first edition of the newspaper La Nación on sale.
• 1874 – In Zaragoza, the republicans rise up because of General Manuel Pavía's coup d'état.
• 1882 – In Galicia (Spain), the newspaper La Voz de Galicia appears.
• 1904 – In Spain, the Aeronautics Testing Center is created, with an attached laboratory where Torres Quevedo carried out the first practical tests of his Telekino.
• 1920 – Death of Benito Pérez Galdós, Spanish novelist, playwright, chronicler and politician (b. 1843).
• 1962 – The OAS lifts the sanctions it imposed in 1960 on the Dominican Republic.
• 1969 – In Fez (Morocco), the treaty is signed by which Spain returns the territory of Ifni to Morocco.
• 1977 – In Spain, the Political Reform Act is enacted, which contained the tacit repeal of the Francoist political system.
• 1977 – The Spanish Cortes pass Law 17/1977, which allows people's given names to be registered in the Civil Registry in any of the languages of Spain.
• 2013 – In Guatemala City, the priest Mario Leonel Orantes Nájera is released after a reduction of his sentence; he had been convicted in 2001 as an accomplice in the murder of Bishop Juan José Gerardi, who was killed in 1998 two days after presenting the report Guatemala: Never Again on the victims of the internal armed conflict.
• 2014 – In Antarctica, Chile opens its Union Glacier Joint Polar Scientific Station.