January 23rd Through History

Explanation: By burning the Bounty, the mutineers hoped to erase all trace of their presence. They were not discovered until 1808 by Captain Mayhew Folger. Their isolated community, mixing mutineers and Tahitians, is the origin of the current population of Pitcairn, the least populated British territory in the world.

Explanation: Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy officer Don Walsh dived to nearly 11,000 meters, setting a record that wasn't matched until 2012 by filmmaker James Cameron in his submersible Deepsea Challenger. Auguste Piccard, Jacques's father, was the inventor of the bathyscaphe and had himself set altitude records with his stratospheric balloons.

Explanation: Liechtenstein is one of only two countries in the world doubly landlocked within two other countries (along with Uzbekistan). With an area of 160 km², it is the 6th smallest state in the world. Despite its size, it has one of the highest per capita incomes in Europe and has had no army since 1868.

Explanation: David Hilbert is one of the most influential mathematicians in history. In 1900, at the International Congress of Mathematicians, he put forward a list of 23 unsolved problems that shaped mathematical research throughout the 20th century. His program to formalize all of mathematics was, however, called into question by Gödel's incompleteness theorems in 1931.

Explanation: The Paris Agreement signed on January 27, 1973 called for a ceasefire but did not end the hostilities. The war continued between North and South Vietnam until the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, after which Vietnam was reunified under communist control in 1976. The United States had lost approximately 58,000 soldiers in the conflict.

Explanation: Röntgen received the very first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 for his discovery of X-rays in November 1895. Remarkably, he refused to patent his discovery so that all of humanity could benefit from it freely. The first known X-ray is of the hand of his wife Anna Bertha Ludwig, taken on December 22, 1895.

Explanation: Elizabeth Blackwell earned her degree from the Geneva Medical College in New York, which had accepted her following a student vote — the students believed her application was a joke. After her studies, she founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children in 1857, the first hospital run and managed exclusively by women.

Explanation: Édouard Manet is often considered the forerunner of Impressionism, even though he always refused to take part in the Impressionist group's exhibitions. His paintings Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) and Olympia (1865) scandalized the Parisian public of the time. He was very close to Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Berthe Morisot, who became his sister-in-law.

Explanation: The Union of Utrecht united seven Protestant provinces of the Spanish Netherlands against Spanish rule. In 1581, it led to the Act of Abjuration, the declaration of independence of the United Provinces, the first official document of its kind in modern history. This small trading state became in the 17th century the world's leading commercial power, a period known as the "Dutch Golden Age".

Explanation: Fletcher Christian was the first mate, meaning the second-in-command to Captain William Bligh. The mutiny took place on 28 April 1789 in the Pacific waters, near the island of Tonga. Bligh and 18 men who remained loyal were abandoned on a longboat and traveled 6,700 km to Timor, a remarkable feat of navigation. The Bounty mutiny inspired many novels and films.