Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, the "national poet" of Australia, famous for his song "Waltzing Mathilda," was born in the the New South Wales outback.  He went to school in Sydney and became a solicitor before starting a writing career.  He was a renowned journalist, covering the Boer War and also the First World War before enlisting and serving in France.  He died in 1941 with 221 Australian pounds in the bank. (By John Osborne)  

George Armstrong Custer and Elizabeth Bacon had met at a Thanksgiving party in 1862 while the young cavalry officer was on leave. Now commanding a brigade, he was able to get another leave for the couple to be married in their hometown of Monroe, Michigan.  The service took place at the Presbyterian Church in Monroe at eight o'clock in the evening. The couple honeymooned in New York and visited West Point before joining the Army of Potomac together in winter quarters.  (By John Osborne) 

Charing Cross Station, designed by John Hawkshaw and boasting a single 164 foot arch covering six tracks of the South-Eastern Railway, opened for business at the same time as the ornate E.M. Barry Charing Cross Hotel built above it. Along with Kings Cross (opened 1852) and Victoria (1860), Charing Cross remains one of the busiest of London's main-line stations opened in the mid-Victorian period.  (By John Osborne)  

David Owen Dodd was a seventeen year-old telegrapher from Little Rock, Arkansas working in Mississippi when Union sentries halted him on a rainy night just before New Year's. A search found sheets of Morse code hidden in his boots outlining Union troop dispositions. He was tried as a spy in a military court, found guilty, and sentenced to death.  He was hanged on the grounds of his old school in Little Rock in the afternoon. (By John Osborne)

William C. Ralston, a prominent Western businessman with interests in several Nevada mines, founded the Bank of California in San Francisco.  It boasted a capital of around $2,000,000, a very healthy amount for a bank in the age, and held largely in gold coin, as well. He had the assistance of San Francisco businessman Darius Ogden Mills, who became the bank's first president. Branches soon opened in Nevada.  (By John Osborne)