Friday, January 23, 2026

The final signal was detected from the NASA space probe Pioneer 10, then about 12 billion kilometres (7.5 billion miles) from Earth.

American journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and later murdered by al-Qaeda agents in Karachi, Pakistan.

Five people attempted to set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, an act that many later claimed to have been staged by the Chinese Communist Party to frame Falun Gong and thus escalate their persecution.

Madeleine Albright was sworn in as the first female United States Secretary of State, becoming the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government at that time.

The first version of Mosaic, created by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, was released, becoming the first popular web browser.

USS Pueblo was seized by North Korean forces, who claimed that it had violated their territorial waters while spying.

American inventor Fred Morrison sold the rights to his "flying disc" to the Wham-O toy company, who later renamed it the "Frisbee"

World War II: Japan began an invasion of the island of New Britain in the Australian Territory of New Guinea.