January 1: The International Police Association (IPA): the largest police organization in the world: is formed.

January 5: U.S. Senator Estes Kefauver introduces a resolution calling for an investigation of organized crime in the U.S.

January 6: The United Kingdom recognizes the People's Republic of China; the Republic of China severs diplomatic relations with Britain in response.

January 7: A fire consumes Mercy Hospital in Davenport, Iowa, killing 39 patients.

January 9: The Israeli government recognizes the People's Republic of China.

January 11: Huk guerrillas manhandle the town of Hermosa, Bataan in the Philippines.

January 12: The British submarine Truculent collides with a Swedish oil tanker in the Thames Estuary and sinks; 64 die. - Cold War: U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson delivers his 'Perimeter Speech', outlining the boundary of U.S. security guarantees.

January 13: Finland forms diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China.

January 17: Great Brinks Robbery: Eleven thieves steal more than $2 million from the Brink's armored car company headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts.

January 21: Accused communist spy Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury.

January 23: The Knesset passes a resolution that states Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

January 24: Cold War: Klaus Fuchs, German emigre and physicist, confesses to an MI5 interrogator that he is a Soviet spy: for 7 years, he passed top secret data on U.S. and British nuclear weapons research to the Soviet Union. Fuchs is formally charged on February 2.

January 26: India promulgates its constitution, forming a republic, and Rajendra Prasad is sworn in as its first president.

January 29: Lord Balfour criticizes the fact that rationing is still in force in Britain.

January 31: President Harry S. Truman orders the development of the hydrogen bomb, in response to the detonation of the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb in 1949. - The last Kuomintang troops surrender in mainland China. (source: Wikipedia)