January 5, Twelfth Night Eve, marked the traditional close of Christmastide in England, a night of wassailing, mumming, and inverted social order.

Tokugawa Ieyasu's forces crushed a rival coalition at Sekigahara, a victory that paved the way for the Tokugawa shogunate's 250-year rule over Japan.

Charles I, whose autocratic rule and belief in divine right would spark the English Civil War and cost him his head, is born in Fife, Scotland.