Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/January 23
- 1368 – Zhu Yuanzhang ascended to the throne of China as the Hongwu Emperor, initiating Ming Dynasty rule over China that would last for three centuries.
- 1656 – Under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte, French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher Blaise Pascal (pictured) published the first of his Lettres provinciales, attacking the Jesuits and their use of casuistic reasoning.
- 1912 – Twelve nations signed the International Opium Convention, the first international drug control treaty, to regulate the production and distribution of opiates.
- 1968 – USS Pueblo was seized by North Korean forces, who claimed that it had violated their territorial waters while spying.
- 2001 – Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident: Seven people attempted to set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square on the eve of Chinese New Year, an act that many people claim was staged by the Communist Party of China to frame Falun Gong and escalate the persecution.
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