January 23 is the 23rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 342 days remaining, 343 in leap years.

Events

• 1556 - The Shaanxi earthquake, the deadliest earthquake in history, occurs with its epicenter in Shaanxi province, China. 830,000 people may have been killed.
• 1570 - The assassination of regent James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray throws Scotland into civil war.
• 1571 - The Royal Exchange opens in London.
• 1579 - The Union of Utrecht forms a Protestant republic in the Netherlands.
• 1719 - The Principality of Liechtenstein is created within the Holy Roman Empire.
• 1789 - Georgetown College becomes the first Catholic college in the United States (Washington, DC).
• 1849 - Elizabeth Blackwell is awarded her MD by the Medical Institute of Geneva, New York, thus becoming the United States' first woman doctor.
• 1851 - The flip of a coin determines whether a new city in Oregon is named after Boston, Massachusetts, or Portland, Maine, with Portland winning.
• 1870 - Marias Massacre
• 1904 - Ålesund Fire: Norwegian coastal town Ålesund is devastated by fire, leaving 10,000 people homeless. German Kaiser Wilhelm helps rebuild the town in Jugendstil architecture.
• 1907 - Charles Curtis from Kansas, becomes the first Native American US Senator.
• 1920 - The Netherlands refuses to surrender ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to the Allies.
• 1937 - In Moscow, 17 leading Communists go on trial accused of participating in a plot led by Leon Trotsky to overthrow Joseph Stalin's regime and assassinate its leaders.
• 1941 - Charles Lindbergh testifies before the U.S. Congress and recommends that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler.
• 1943 - World War II: British forces capture Tripoli from the Nazis.
• 1943 - World War II: Australian and American forces finally defeat the Japanese army in Papua. This turning point in the Pacific War marks the beginning of the end of Japanese aggression.
• 1943 - Duke Ellington plays at New York City's Carnegie Hall for the first time.
• 1950 - The Knesset passes a resolution that states Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
• 1960 - The bathyscaphe USS Trieste breaks a depth record when it descends 35,820 feet (10,750 meters) in the Pacific Ocean.
• 1964 - The 24th Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting the use of poll taxes in national elections, is ratified.
• 1968 - North Korea seizes the USS Pueblo, claiming the ship violated their territorial waters while spying.
• 1973 - President Richard Nixon announces that a peace accord has been reached in Vietnam.
• 1975 - Barney Miller debuts on ABC.
• 1977 - The first segment of the Roots mini-series airs on ABC.
• 1978 - Sweden becomes the first nation to ban aerosol sprays that are thought to damage earth's protective ozone layer.
• 1983 - The A-Team debuts.
• 1985 - O. J. Simpson becomes the first Heisman Trophy winner elected to the Football Hall of Fame.
• 1986 - The first induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley)
• 1997 - Mir Aimal Kasi receives the death sentence for a 1993 assault rifle attack outside CIA headquarters that killed two and wounded three others.
• 1997 - Madeleine Albright becomes the first woman to serve as United States Secretary of State.
• 1999 - Australian Christian missionary Graham Stewart Stains and his two sons are burned alive by radical Hindus while sleeping in their car in eastern India.
• 2002 - "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh returns to the United States under FBI custody.
• 2002 - Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and subsequently murdered in Karachi, Pakistan.

Births

• 1745 - William Jessop, canal engineer (d. 1814)
• 1783 - Stendhal, writer (d. 1842)
• 1786 - Auguste de Montferrand, architect (d. 1858)
• 1832 - Edouard Manet, impressionist artist (d. 1883)
• 1857 - Andrija Mohorovičić, Croatian seismologist (d. 1936)
• 1862 - David Hilbert, Mathematician (d. 1943)
• 1872 - Goce Delchev, Bulgarian revolutionary (d. 1903)
• 1872 - Joze Plečnik, architect (d. 1957)
• 1878 - Oton Župančič, Slovenian poet (d. 1949)
• 1884 - Ralph DePalma, race car driver (d. 1956)
• 1897 - Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, architect (d. 2000)
• 1898 - Sergei Eisenstein, director (d. 1948)
• 1903 - Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, Colombian politician (d. 1948)
• 1903 - Randolph Scott, actor (d. 1987)
• 1907 - Dan Duryea, actor (d. 1968)
• 1907 - Hideki Yukawa, physicist (d. 1981)
• 1910 - Django Reinhardt, guitarist (d. 1953)
• 1919 - Hans Hass, zoologist and underwater scientist
• 1919 - Ernie Kovacs, comedian (d. 1962)
• 1920 - Ray Abrams, tenor saxophonist
• 1920 - Gottfried Böhm, architect
• 1923 - Walter M. Miller Jr., science fiction writer (d. 1996)
• 1928 - Jeanne Moreau, actress
• 1930 - Derek Walcott, author
• 1933 - Chita Rivera, actress, dancer
• 1936 - Jerry Kramer, American football star
• 1938 - Georg Baselitz, painter and sculptor
• 1943 - Gil Gerard, actor
• 1944 - Rutger Hauer, actor
• 1950 - Richard Dean Anderson, actor
• 1957 - Earl Falconer, bassist
• 1957 - Princess Caroline of Monaco
• 1963 - Gail O'Grady, actress
• 1964 - Mariska Hargitay, actress
• 1967 - Naim Suleymanoglu, Bulgaria-born Turkish weightlifter
• 1974 - Tiffani Thiessen, actress

Deaths

• 1002 - Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 980)
• 1570 - James Stewart, Earl of Moray, Regent of Scotland (b. ca. 1531)
• 1789 - John Cleland, novelist (b. 1709)
• 1800 - Edward Rutledge, U.S. statesman (b. 1749)
• 1805 - Claude Chappe, telecommunications pioneer (semaphores) (b. 1763)
• 1837 - John Field, composer (b. 1782)
• 1875 - Charles Kingsley English writer (b. 1819)
• 1893 - Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, the only United States Supreme Court justice from Mississippi (b. 1825)
• 1923 - Max Nordau, author, philosopher and Zionist leader (b. 1849)
• 1931 - Anna Pavlova, ballerina (b. 1881)
• 1937 - Marie Prevost, actress (b. 1898)
• 1943 - Alexander Woollcott, actor, author, bon vivant (b. 1887)
• 1944 - Edvard Munch, Norwegian painter
• 1973 - Kid Ory, musician (b. 1886)
• 1976 - Paul Robeson, actor, singer, social activist (b. 1898)
• 1978 - Jack Oakie, actor (b. 1903)
• 1978 - Terry Kath, musician ("Chicago") (b. 1946)
• 1981 - Samuel Barber, American composer (b. 1910)
• 1983 - George Cukor, director (b. 1899)
• 1989 - Salvador Dalí, artist (b. 1904)
• 1991 - Northrop Frye, literary critic (b. 1912)
• 1992 - Freddie Bartholomew, actor (b. 1924)
• 1993 - Thomas Dorsey, gospel music singer (b. 1899)
• 1994 - Brian Redhead, journalist and broadcaster (b. 1929)
• 2002 - Pierre Bourdieu, French sociologist (b. 1930)
• 2002 - Robert Nozick, philosopher (b. 1938)
• 2003 - Nell Carter, singer, actress
• 2004 - Bob Keeshan, actor ("Captain Kangaroo") (b. 1927)
• 2004 - Helmut Newton, photographer (b. 1920)