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The 2000 Sugar Bowl was the designated Bowl Championship Series (BCS) National Championship Game for the 1999 college football season and was played on January 4, 2000, at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Florida State Seminoles, led by head coach Bobby Bowden (pictured) and representing the Atlantic Coast Conference, defeated the Virginia Tech Hokies, then representing the Big East Conference, by a score of 46–29. With the win, Florida State clinched the 1999 Division I college football championship, the team's second national championship. An estimated total of 79,280 people attended the game in person, while approximately 18.4 million US viewers watched the game on ABC television. The resulting 17.5 television rating was the third-largest ever recorded for a BCS college football game. Florida State wide receiver Peter Warrick was named the game's most valuable player. (more...)

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At the age of 19, Norwegian chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen (pictured) becomes the youngest world number one in FIDE history.
Researchers announce that the likely origin of devil facial tumour disease, a transmissible cancer that has caused the population of Tasmanian Devils to decline significantly, is Schwann cells.
At least 95 people are killed and more than 100 others injured in a suicide bombing in Lakki Marwat, North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan.
The ASEAN–China Free Trade Area, the world's largest free trade area in terms of population, comes into effect.
Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in Lithuania, the only Chernobyl-type nuclear power station in the European Union, is shut down.
Six people, including four people at a shopping mall, are killed during a shooting spree in Espoo, Finland.

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January 4: Independence Day in Burma (1948)

1698 – Most of London's Palace of Whitehall, the main residence of the English monarchs dating from 1530, was destroyed by fire (pictured).
1854 – Captain William McDonald aboard the Samarang discovered the McDonald Islands, uninhabited, barren islands located in the Southern Ocean about two-thirds of the way from Madagascar to Antarctica.
1884 – The Fabian Society, an intellectual movement whose purpose is to advance the socialist cause by gradualist and reformist methods rather than revolutionary means, was founded in London.
1989 – In the Second Gulf of Sidra incident over the Gulf of Sidra in the Mediterranean Sea, two American F-14A Tomcats shot down two Libyan MiG-23 Flogger Es that appeared to be attempting to engage them.
2004 – Spirit, the first of two rovers of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission, landed successfully on Mars at 04:35 Ground UTC.

More anniversaries: January 3 – January 4 – January 5

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From Wikipedia's newest articles:

... that because of its aquatic origin and resemblance to the vulva, the shankha (carved examples pictured) is linked with female fertility and is an integral part of Tantric rites?
... that Friedrich Nietzsche suggested the crest on the frontispiece of Richard Wagner's autobiography, Mein Leben, be composed of a vulture and the constellation The Plough?
... that in Cross v. United States, the United States Supreme Court established the principle that the Court of Claims could rehear Congressional reference cases?
... that The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, the 22nd album by Sparks and their first pop musical, was commissioned by Swedish national radio?
... that Blumea balsamifera is a flowering plant, which belongs to the Asteraceae family and is used in the Philippines as a diuretic and treatment for the common cold?
... that the Democratic Association of Victoria, the first Australian socialist organisation founded in 1872, lasted only ten months?
... that in January 2009, a lorry burst through the stern doors of the fast ferry Stena Voyager while the ship was at sea?
... that in 1971, Cambodian army officer Um Savuth offered Richard Nixon his pet elephant as a gift?

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