January
On this day in January:
- 1st January 1729: birth of John Erasmus Blackett, four times Mayor of Newcastle.
- 1st January 1870; first edition of the Northern Echo newspaper, produced in Darlington.
- 1st January 1948: Railway nationalisation; including the London and North Eastern Railway.
- 4th January 1505: founding of Newcatle-upon-Tyne Trinity House
- 4th January 1922: start of the timber yard fire which devistated large parts of Hartlepool.
- 5th January 1996: opening of Hartlepool Art Gallery in the former Christ Church.
- 6th January 1936; opening of the Lyric Cinema, Heaton (now People's Theatre).
- 7th January 1936; TV screenwriter Ian La Frenais born in Whitey Bay
- 8th January 1842; completion of Victoria Tunnel to carry coal from Spital Tongues Colliery to the river Tyne.
- 14th January 1880: opening of the Watch House for the Seaton Sluice Volunteer Life-Saving Company.
- 16th January 1862: 204 miners killed in a disaster at Hartley Colliery.
- 20th January 1939; opening of the £30,000 pithead baths at Murton Colliery.
- 22nd January 1901: death of Queen Victoria, at age 81. Her son became King Edward VII.
- 23rd January 1889: Middlesbrough Town Hall opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales.
- 26th January 2005; closure of Ellington Colliery, the last operating deep coal mine in the North East
- 26th January 2007; the Green Market closed to make way for new developments in Eldon Square in Newcastle.
- 27th January 2007; opening of the Middlesbrough Institute Of Modern Art (MIMA)
