This Day in History

Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus found

On January 3, 1924 a team of archeologist led by British Howard Carter uncover the greatest treasure of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen tomb near Luxor, Egypt – a stone sarcophagus containing a solid gold coffin that holds his mummy.
Most of the ancient Egyptian tombs had been discovered when Carter first arrived in Egypt in 1891 but the tombs of little-known Pharaoh Tutankhamen, who had died when he was a teen, was still unaccounted for. The British archeologist began an intensive search for “King Tut’s Tomb,” after the end of WWI and finally found steps to the burial room hidden in the debris near the entrance of the nearby tomb of King Ramses VI in the Valley of the Kings. On November 26, 1922, Carter and fellow archaeologist Lord Carnarvon entered the tomb, finding it miraculously intact.
The four-room tomb was excavated over four years, uncovering an incredible collection of several thousand objects. The most splendid architectural find was a stone sarcophagus containing three coffins nested within each other. Inside the final coffin, made out of solid gold, was the mummy of the Tutankhamen, preserved for more than 3,000 years.

Japan’s Meiji Restoration

Also on January 3, 1868, patriotic samurai from Japan’s outlying domains join with anti-shogunate nobles in restoring the emperor to power after 700 years.
The coup that heralded the birth of modern Japan was spearheaded by the fear by many Japanese that the nation’s feudal leaders were ill-equipped to resist the threat of foreign domination.
Soon after seizing power, the young Emperor Meiji and his ministers moved the royal court from Kyoto to Tokyo, dismantled feudalism, and enacted widespread reforms along Western models.
The newly unified Japanese government also set off on a path of rapid industrialization and militarization, building Japan into a major world power by the early 20th century.