NOW & THEN
23 JANUARY
1368: Coronation of Zhu Yuanzhang as emperor of China, marking the beginning of the Ming dynasty rule which lasted for three centuries.
1562: Licence granted for leadmining in Upper Clydesdale.
1570: The Earl of Moray, regent of Scotland, was assassinated.
1571: Queen Elizabeth I opened the Royal Exchange in London.
1790: The Bounty mutineers landed on Pitcairn Island, with Fletcher Christian.
1849: Elizabeth Blackwell, from Bristol, became first woman doctor when she graduated from Medical School of Geneva, New York State.
1859: Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii began an eruption that lasted for 300 days.
1920: Netherlands refused to surrender Germany’s former Kaiser William II to Allies for punishment as First World War criminal.
1924: Ramsay Macdonald became the Labour Party’s first prime minister.
1937: Seventeen Communist leaders confessed in Moscow that they conspired with Leon Trotsky to undermine Soviet regime of Josef Stalin.
1941: Nylon was first produced in Britain, at Coventry.
1950: Israel’s Knesset resolved that Jerusalem would be the nation’s capital.
1963: Kim Philby, double agent, defected to Russia.
1970: First jumbo jet arrival at Heathrow Airport, London, with 362 passengers. The airport could not cope with the extra luggage, and much of it went astray.
1973: US president Richard Nixon announced that accord had been reached in Vietnam War.
1973: A volcanic eruption occurred without warning on the Icelandic island of Eldfell, and almost resulted in the permanent evacuation of the island.
1978: Sweden became the first country to ban aerosol sprays, believed to be causing damage to the earth’s ozone layer.
1979: Space Invaders game first seen in Britain, exhibited at London’s Amusement Trade Exhibition. Within 12 months, 70,000 had been sold.
1983: Bjorn Borg announced his retirement from tennis.
1985: House of Lords debate was televised live for the first time.
1997: Madeleine Albright became the first woman to serve as United States Secretary of State.
2002: Reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan and subsequently murdered.
2008: The chestnut tree that Anne Frank wrote about in her diary as she hid from the Nazis during the Second World War in Amsterdam was saved. The diseased tree had been deemed dangerous by the authorities and was due to be chopped down.
2009: Figures revealed that the UK was officially in recession after the economy saw its worst output performance since 1980 in the final three months of 2008.
2015: Salman bun Abdulaziz was crowned king of Saudi Arabia following the death of his half-brother King Abdullah.
BIRTHDAYS
Earl Falconer, bass player and singer in UB40, 63; Scott Gibbs, rugby league and union player, 49; Caroline, Princess of Hanover (Princess Caroline of Monaco), 63; Steven Taylor, footballer, 34; Gary Mackay, Scottish footballer and agent, 56; Lisa Snowdon, model and TV presenter, 48; Glen Chapple, English cricketer, 46
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1832 Edouard Manet, artist; 1855 John Browning, firearm designer; 1900 Humphrey Bogart, actor (Warner Brothers changed his birthday to 25 December, 1899 and lopped a year off his age); 1910 Django Reinhardt, guitarist and composer; 1919 Bob Paisley OBE, football manager and player; .
Deaths: 1570 James Stewart, Earl of Moray, Regent of Scotland; 1622 William Baffin, navigator and searcher for North-west Passage; 1805 Arthur Guinness, founder of the Guinness brewery; 1875 Charles Kingsley, clergyman and author; 1931 Anna Pavlova, prima ballerina; 1944 Edvard Munch, painter; 1956 Alexander Korda, film director and producer; 1988 Charles Glen King, biochemist who discovered Vitamin C; 1989 Salvador Dali, artist; 1994 Brian Redhead, radio presenter; 2017 Gorden Kaye, British actor.