January 23

1556 The deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, hit Shaanxi province, China on January 23, 1556. A 520 mile-wide (840-km) area was destroyed and in some counties as much as 60% of the population was killed. Most of the population in the area at the time lived in yaodongs, artificial caves in loess cliffs, many of which collapsed with catastrophic loss of life. 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 was assassinated in Linlithgow on January 23, 1570.  He was killed by James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, a supporter of his half-sister, Mary, Queen of Scots. As Moray was passing in a cavalcade in the main street below, Hamilton fatally wounded him with a carbine shot from a window of his uncle Archbishop Hamilton's house. It was the first recorded assassination by a firearm.

1656 The first of French philosopher and theologian Blaise Pascal's Lettres Provinciales was published on January 23, 1656. The work comprises 18 letters and pamphlets that were written in an ironic and humorous style in which Pascal criticized the Jesuits, promoted Jansenist teaching and put forward the argument that whilst true faith only belongs to the morally upright God's grace is sufficient for all.

1718 The Principality of Liechtenstein was created on January 23, 1718. Liechtenstein was a part of the Holy Roman Empire until 1806 when it became an independent principality. Liechtenstein is between Austria and Switzerland. It is with Uzbekistan, one of only two doubly landlocked countries. This means that it is landlocked by a landlocked country.

Liechtenstein 

1752 The Italian pianist, composer and teacher Muzio Clementi was born on January 23, 1752. Clementi was the first to write for piano in style distinguished from that of harpsichord. In 1766 he was brought to England, where toured as a virtuoso pianist, and went into the piano-manufacturing business. In 1826 Clementi completed his collection of keyboard studies the Gradus ad Parnassum, on which subsequent piano methods have been based.

1789 In 1787 John Carroll, America's first Catholic bishop, proposed the establishment of a local Roman Catholic college in Georgetown, Maryland (now a part of Washington, D.C.) after the American Revolution allowed for the free practice of religion. Georgetown College, the first Catholic university in the United States, was founded on January 23, 1789.

The college as it appeared in 1828

1790 Following the Mutiny on the Bounty, Fletcher Christian and a small group of sailors, 11 Tahitian women, and 6 Tahitian men went to the remote Pitcairn Island. After they arrived they took everything they could from the ship then burnt it on January 23, 1790. They hoped to spend happy and peaceful lives there. However plenty went wrong, there was much conspiracy, debauchery and carnage and after three years only four of the mutineers survived.

1806 Former UK Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger died on January 23, 1806 at Bowling Green House on Putney Heath crushed by the overthrow of his coalition against Napoleon and the effects of years of drinking three bottles of port daily. The cause of death was likely peptic ulceration of his stomach or duodenum.

1843 In the nineteenth century sugar was most often sold to the general public in tall, solid cones with rounded tops called "sugar loaves." Moravian Jakub Kryštof Rad, director of a sugar company in Dačice first patented a method of cutting sugar into small cubes on January 23, 1843.

1849 When Elizabeth Blackwell applied to Geneva Medical College in Geneva, New York, it was originally thought her application was a student prank by a rival college and was accepted in like spirit. Honorably, they kept to their commitment even though the acceptance provoked much criticism. Ignoring the ridicule, Elizabeth pursued her studies and graduated at the top of her class. On January 23, 1849 she became the first woman to qualify as a doctor of medicine in the US.

1855 The first permanent bridge over the Mississippi River opened as a toll bridge on January 23, 1855. This wooden bridge spanned the Mississippi River just above St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The crossing is made today by the Hennepin Avenue Bridge.

The original structure circa 1865

1870 As white settlers began populating Montana from the 1850s, disputes with Native Americans ensued, primarily over land ownership and control.  U.S. cavalrymen killed 173 Native Americans, mostly women and children, in what became known as the Marias Massacre on January 23, 1870.
Chief Joseph and Col. John Gibbon met again on the Big Hole Battlefield site in 1889.

1875 English author and cleric Charles Kingsley died on January 23, 1875 (aged 55) in Eversley, Hampshire. He was known as the "Chartist clergyman" because of such social novels as Alton Lorke, which were influential in the mid 19th century. His children's story, The Water-Babies, which was published as a protest against child chimney sweeps stirred public indignation.

1897 Canadian/British fighter pilot, entrepreneur and spymaster Sir William Stephenson was born on January 23, 1897. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in the history of espionage and intelligence, and his career spanned both World War I and World War II. Many people believe he was the inspiration for James Bond, created by author Ian Fleming. Fleming and Stephenson were friends, and both were involved in intelligence work during World War II.

1902 The Hakkōda Mountains incident happened on January 23, 1902, when a group of Imperial Japanese Army soldiers became lost in a blizzard on the Hakkōda Mountains in Aomori Prefecture in northern Honshu, Japan, en route to Tashiro Hot Spring. The 199 deaths during a single ascent make it the most lethal disaster in the modern history of mountaineering. From the 11 survivors, 8 needed amputations.

1906 From approximately 1890 until 1914 the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky frequently visited Ustilug, a town in the modern Volyn Oblast, Ukraine. He spent most of his summers there, where he also met his cousin, Katherine Gavrylivna Nosenko (called "Katya"), whom he married on January 23, 1906. After delivering her fourth child,  Katya was discovered to have tuberculosis and was confined to the sanatorium at Leysin, high in the Alps. Katya died in March 1939.

1910 The jazz musician Django Reinhardt was born on January 23, 1910, in a Gypsy caravan in Liberchies, Belgium. He was forced to give up the violin after a caravan fire in 1928 mutilated his left hand. Despite the accident, Reinhardt overcame the handicap and went on to create the 'hot' jazz guitar technique, which has since become a living musical tradition within French Gypsy culture.

1915 The Chilembwe uprising, a rebellion against British colonial rule in Nyasaland (modern-day Malawi), began in the evening of January 23, 1915, when rebels, incited by John Chilembwe, an American-educated black millenarian Christian minister attacked the A. L. Bruce plantation's headquarters at Magomero and killed three white colonists. Chilembwe was shot dead by a police patrol near the border a fortnight later.

1915 The Chilembwe uprising began on January 23, 1915. It was a rebellion led by John Chilembwe, a Baptist minister and educator, against British colonial rule in Nyasaland, now modern-day Malawi. The uprising was a response to grievances related to land dispossession, forced labor, and other social and economic injustices faced by the local population under British colonial administration. The rebellion was ultimately suppressed by the colonial authorities, and John Chilembwe was killed during the unrest

1944 The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch was most famous for his 1895 work The Scream. After Munch died in Nazi occupied Norway on January 23, 1944, his collection of 5,451 paintings and drawings were found hidden in a locked room.

1956 On January 23, 1956, Cleveland forbade its under 18 citizens from dancing at rock and roll concerts, citing a municipal legal anomaly from 1931. Thirty years later, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was opened on the lakefront in Cleveland.

1957 In 1948 a young American just out of the army, Walter Frederick Morrison, applied for a patent for a plastic flying disc. It is said the idea originated when Morrison and his wife began flinging pie tins to one another on the beach. On January 23, 1957 Morrison sold the rights to his flying disc to the Wham-O toy company, (inventors of the hula- hoop). Called at first the “Toy Flying Saucer”, they changed its name to the Frisbee disc.

Walter Frederick Morrison promoting his Pluto Platters, forerunner of the Frisbee.

1957 The longest United Nations speech in history was delivered by Indian Defense Minister Krishna Menon on January 23, 1957. Defending India's stand on Kashmir, the speech lasted eight hours and ended with his collapse and hospitalization due to exhaustion.

1960 The bathyscaphe USS Trieste broke a sea depth record by descending to 10,911 metres (35,797 ft) in the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench on January 23, 1960. The vessel, which was designed and built by Swiss engineer Auguste Piccard, was piloted by Piccard and US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh. The dive took place in the Challenger Deep, the deepest point in the Mariana Trench, 

1989 Salvador Dalí died of heart failure at Spanish homeown of Figueres at the age of 84 on January 23, 1989, while his favorite record of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde played. He is buried in the crypt below the stage of his Theatre and Museum in Figueres.

1992 The Simpsons episode Lisa the Greek originally aired on January 23, 1992.  It aired only a few days before Super Bowl XXVI, and correctly predicted that the Washington Redskins would win the game. When the episode was rebroadcast in '93 and '95 it was redubbed and again predicted the winners.

1997 Madeleine Albright was sworn in as the first female United States Secretary of State on January 23, 1997, becoming the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government at that time. She served as Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton.

2017 The Japan Sumo Association's Yokozuna Deliberation Council met on January 23, 2017 and determined that Kisenosato Yutuka was a suitable candidate to be promoted as the 72nd yokozuna. The Board of Directors accepted the Council's recommendation two days later, meaning he became the first Japanese wrestler to earn the title in 19 years.