January 1: The Saarland joins West Germany. - An Irish Republican Army attack on the Brookeborough police barracks leads to the deaths of Seán South and Fergal O'Hanlon. - Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini suffers the stroke that leads to his death a little over two weeks later.

January 2: The San Francisco and Los Angeles stock exchanges merge to form the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.

January 3: Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch.

January 4: After 69 years the last issue of Collier's Weekly Magazine is published.

January 5: Russell Endean becomes the first batsman to be dismissed for having handled the ball in test match cricket.

January 6: Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the 3rd and final time. He is only shown from the waist up, even during the gospel segment, singing "Peace In The Valley". Ed Sullivan describes Elvis thus: "This is a real decent, fine boy. We've never had a pleasanter experience on our show with a big name than we've had with you. You're thoroughly all right."

January 9: British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigns.

January 10: Harold Macmillan becomes the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

January 11: The African Convention is founded in Dakar.

January 13: Wham-O Company produces the first Frisbee.

January 14: Jagadguru Kripalu Maharaj was named fifth Jagadguru (world teacher) after giving seven days of speeches before 500 Hindu scholars.

January 15: Release, in Japan, of the film Throne of Blood, Akira Kurosawa's reworking of Macbeth.

January 16: The Cavern Club opens in Liverpool.

January 20: Dwight D. Eisenhower is inaugurated for a second term as President of the United States. - Israel withdraws from the Sinai Peninsula (captured from Egypt on October 29, 1956). - The New York City "Mad Bomber", George P. Metesky, is arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut, and is charged with planting more than 30 bombs.

January 23: Ku Klux Klan members force truck driver Willie Edwards to jump off a bridge into the Alabama River; he drowns as a result.

January 26: The Ibirapuera Planetarium (the first in the Southern Hemisphere) is inaugurated in the city of São Paulo, Brazil.

January 31: Three students on a junior high school playground in Pacoima, California, are among the 8 persons killed following a mid-air collision between a Douglas DC-7 airliner and a Northrop F-89 Scorpion fighter jet, in the skies above the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles, US. (source: Wikipedia)