| 23 January 1264 | France, England [political events] | King Louis IX of France, arbitrating between King Henry III of England and the English barons, pronounces in favour of Henry in the Mise of Amiens, freeing him from any obligations to maintain the Provisions of Westminster (plan for legal reforms) and affirming his customary rights as king. This decision drives the baronial leader Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, and the barons into open war. |
| 23 January 1516 | Spain [political events] | Following the death of King Ferdinand I of Aragon, his son (also grandson of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I), Archduke Charles of Austria (later the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V), succeeds as King Charles I of Spain, thereby founding the Habsburg dynasty in Spain. The regency council appoints Cardinal Jiménez de Cisnéros as regent. |
| 23 January 1516 | Spain [births and deaths] | Ferdinand the Catholic, king of Sicily (as Ferdinand II, 1468–1516), Aragon (as Ferdinand II, 1479–1516), Castile (as Ferdinand V and joint sovereign with his wife Isabella I 1474–1504), and Naples (as Ferdinand III, 1504–16), who united the Spanish kingdoms into one nation and began Spain's period of imperial expansion, dies (63). |
| 23–30 January 1517 | Ottoman Empire, Egypt [wars] | The Ottomans take the Egyptian city of Cairo from its Mameluke rulers after bitter battles culminating in four days of vicious street fighting. After a last stand in the citadel, the Mameluke sultan escapes to continue resistance to the south, but is later captured and executed (13 April). |
| 23 January 1565 | India, Vijayanagara [wars] | A coalition of the Muslim sultans of the Deccan defeats the armies of Vijayanagara at Talikota, India, effectively bringing an end to the ancient Hindu kingdom. |
| 23 January 1631 | France, Sweden, Germany, Holy Roman Empire, Saxony, Brandenburg [treaties] | By the Treaty of Bärwalde, France undertakes to subsidize Sweden for six years with an annual 1 million livres to help liberate Germany from the control of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II. King Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden attempts to win over Saxony and Brandenburg, but the elector John George of Saxony, bent on neutrality, appeals to the emperor to revoke the Edict of Restitution (of March 1629) as the basis for a German settlement. |
| 23 January 1806 | England [political events] | William Pitt the Younger, prime minister of Britain 1783–1801 and 1804–06, a Tory, dies in London, England (46). |
| 23 January 1832 | France [births and deaths] | Edouard Manet, French realist painter and important 19th-century artist, born (–1883). |
| 23 January 1860 | UK, France [treaties] | The Cobden–Chevalier Treaty (negotiated between the British Liberal politician and economist Richard Cobden and the French economist Michel Chevalier) establishes a substantial degree of free trade between Britain and France. |
| 23 January 1898 | Latvia, Russia [births and deaths] | Sergey Mikhaylovich Eisenstein, Russian film director, born in Riga, Latvia (–1948). |
| 23 January 1924 | United Kingdom [political events] | Ramsay MacDonald forms the first Labour government in Britain (without an overall majority), with Philip Snowden as chancellor of the Exchequer. |
| 23 January 1944 | Norway [births and deaths] | Edvard Munch, Norwegian painter of pyschological subjects such as The Scream, dies in Ekely, near Oslo, Norway (80). |
| 23 January 1960 | Switzerland [exploration] | Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard and US Navy lieutenant Don Walsh descend to the bottom of Challenger Deep (10,916 m/35,810 ft), off the Pacific island of Guam, in the bathyscaph Trieste, setting a new undersea record. |
| 23 January 1985 | UK [television] | The proceedings of the House of Lords are televised for first time in Britain. |
| 23 January 1989 | Spain [births and deaths] | Salvador Dalí, Spanish surrealist painter who also designed furniture, jewellery, and stage and film sets, dies in Figueras, Spain (84). |
| 23 January 1997 | Switzerland [political events] | Switzerland establishes a fund to compensate victims of the Holocaust and their families following the discovery of Nazi gold in Swiss banks. |
| 23 January 1999 | USA [astronomy] | NASA scientists photograph light emitted by a gamma-ray burst for the first time. |
| 23 January 2003 | USA [painting] | Descent into Limbo, a rare painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna, sells for about US$28 million at auction in New York City. It is more than double the previous record for a work by the 15th century painter. |
