January 23
Today is
Nat'l Pie Day in the U.S.
Events
971 Using
crossbows, Song dynasty troops soundly defeat a
war elephant corps of the Southern Han at Shao.
1556 The deadliest earthquake in history, the
Shaanxi earthquake, hits Shaanxi province, China. The death toll may have been as high as 830,000.
1570
James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, regent for the infant King
James VI of Scotland, is assassinated by firearm, the first recorded instance of such.
1656
Blaise Pascal publishes the first of his
Lettres provinciales.
1795 After an extraordinary charge across the frozen
Zuiderzee, the
French cavalry captured 14 Dutch ships and 850 guns, in a rare occurrence of a battle between ships and cavalry.
1849
Elizabeth Blackwell is awarded her M.D. by the Geneva Medical College of Geneva, New York, becoming the United States' first female doctor.
1870 In Montana, U.S. cavalrymen kill 173 Native Americans, mostly women and children, in what becomes known as the
Marias Massacre.
1909
RMS Republic, a passenger ship of the White Star Line, becomes the first ship to use the
CQD distress signal after colliding with another ship, the SS Florida, off the Massachusetts coastline, an event that kills six people. The Republic sinks the next day.
1920 The Netherlands refuses to surrender the exiled
Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to the Allies.
1957 American inventor
Walter Frederick Morrison sells the rights to his flying disc to the
Wham-O toy company, which later renames it the "
Frisbee".
1960 The
bathyscaphe USS Trieste breaks a depth record by descending to 10,911 metres (35,797 ft) in the Pacific Ocean.
1967
Milton Keynes (England) is founded as a new town by Order in Council, with a planning brief to become a city of 250,000 people.
1973 United States President Richard Nixon announces that
a peace accord has been reached in Vietnam.
1986 The
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts its first members: Little Richard, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley.
1997
Madeleine Albright becomes the first woman to serve as United States Secretary of State.
1998
Netscape announced
Mozilla, with the intention to release Communicator code as open source.
2002 U.S. journalist
Daniel Pearl is kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan and subsequently murdered.
2003 A very weak signal from
Pioneer 10 (launched Mar 3, 1972) is detected for the last time, but no usable data can be extracted.
Births
1737 John Hancock; 1832 Ιdouard Manet; 1855 John Browning; 1898
Randolph Scott; 1907 Dan Duryea; 1910 Django Reinhardt; 1913 Wally Parks; 1919 Ernie Kovacs; 1920 Walter Frederick Morrison; 1933 Chita Rivera; 1943 Gil Gerard; 1944 Rutger Hauer; 1950 Richard Dean Anderson; 1951 Chesley Sullenberger; 1953 Robin Zander; 1964 Mariska Hargitay; 1974 Tiffani Thiessen
Deaths
1622 William Baffin; 1803 Arthur Guinness; 1883 Gustave Dorι; 1944 Edvard Munch; 1973 Kid Ory; 1976 Paul Robeson; 1977 Toots Shor; 1978 Jack Oakie; 1989 Salvador Dalν; 2003 Nell Carter; 2004 Bob Keeshan; 2005 Johnny Carson; 2011 Jack LaLanne; 2015 Ernie Banks