| 6 January 1066 | England [administration] | Following the death of King Edward the Confessor of England on the previous day, Harold Godwinson, earl of Wessex, is elected as his successor. |
| 6 January 1515 | Holy Roman Empire, Spanish Netherlands [political events] | Charles, the Spanish Infante and archduke of Austria, heir to Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, comes of age and takes over from Margaret, Archduchess of Austria, as governor of the Netherlands. |
| 6 January–9 July 1540 | England [political events] | King Henry VIII of England marries Anne of Cleves, his minister Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex's German diplomatic trophy, but is repelled by her; he favours his new mistress, Catherine Howard. Cromwell falls from power. |
| 6 January 1580 | England [births and deaths] | John Smith, English explorer who founded Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America, born in Lincolnshire, England (–1631). |
| 6 January 1784 | Ottoman Empire, Russia, Crimea-Ottoman [treaties] | By the terms of the Treaty of Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire acquiesces in Russia's annexation of the Crimea and the Caucasian region of Kuban. |
| 6 January 1818 | UK, India [treaties] | Under the Treaty of Mundoseer, the dominions of the Maratha Holkar dynasty of Indore are combined administratively with the Rajput states of northwest India, and come under British protection. |
| 6 January 1838 | USA [communications] | The US artist and inventor Samuel Finley Breese Morse and financier Alfred Louis Vail make the first successful public demonstration of an electric telegraph. |
| 6 January 1896 | Cape Colony, Transvaal [law and government] | Cecil Rhodes resigns the premiership of Cape Colony following the failure of the raid on Transvaal by his friend Leander Starr Jameson. |
| 6 January 1919 | [births and deaths] | Theodore (‘Teddy’) Roosevelt, 26th president of the USA 1901–09, a Republican, dies in Oyster Bay, New York (60). |
| 6 January–5 February 1960 | UK, Africa [diplomacy] | The British prime minister Harold Macmillan visits Ghana, Nigeria, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and South Africa and, on 3 February, speaking in Cape Town to the South African parliament, he declares: ‘The wind of change is blowing through this continent..... and our national policies must take account of it.’ |
| 6 January 1987 | Portugal [treaties] | The Portuguese Council of State agrees to restore Macau to China before 2000. On 13 April, Portugal signs an agreement to return Macau in 1999. |
| 6 January 1989 | USSR [political events] | The USSR announces the mass rehabilitation of thousands of citizens who were victims of Stalin's purges in the 1930s–50s. |
| 6 January 1998 | USA [space exploration] | The US spacecraft Lunar Prospector is launched to gather information on the Moon's resources, structure, and origin. |
