1 January 1801 From the astronomical observatory of Palermo, the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovers Ceres, the only asteroid in the inner Solar System that since 2006 is considered a dwarf planet.
3 January 1117 With an earthquake of an estimated magnitude of 6,8, the Verona earthquake, the strongest seismic event that took place in the Po valley which we know of thanks to a large number of historiographical information.
4 January 1854 Captain William McDonald, aboard the Samarang, discovers (and christens) the Heard and McDonald Islands, two small uninhabited islands located off the Antarctic Seas, which today belong administratively to Australia and are home to the country's only two active volcanoes, one of which, Mawson Peak, with its 2.745 meters is also the highest Australian mountain.
7 January 1610 After several days of observations, Galileo Galilei and Simon Marius discover the four largest satellites of Jupiter, which they call Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto: stating that the four celestial bodies were in orbit around the planet, the two with their discovery will give solid support to the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus, according to which not all the objects of the System Solar orbited the Earth.
7 January 2007 They are isolated stem cells in the amniotic fluid that surrounds the fetus during pregnancy: the first author of the study that sanctions the discovery, published in the journal “Nature Biotechnology”, is the Italian researcher and pediatric surgeon Paolo De Coppi.
8 January 2005 US astronomers Michael Brown, Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz they discover Eris, the second dwarf planet by mean diameter in the Solar System after Pluto: it is an icy object orbiting in the outer Solar System.
9 January 1693 With a moment magnitude of 7,32, the Val di Noto earthquake it hits eastern Sicily becoming the largest seismic event to hit the area in historical times.
9 January 1793 In the presence of the then US President George Washington, the French aviator and inventor Jean-Pierre François Blanchard carries out the first balloon ride of North America.
9 January 1839 The Paris Academy of Sciences announces theinvention of the daguerreotype, the first photographic process for the development of images developed by the French Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre starting from an idea by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and his son Isidore.
9 January 1998 Based on observations of supernovae in distant galaxies, US physicists Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt and Adam Riess discover that the universe is in a phase of accelerated expansioni.e. that the rate at which it expands is increasing over time. This discovery will be worth the three scientists the Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded to them in 2011.
12 January 2010 A disastrous 7,0 magnitude earthquake strikes Caribbean state of Haiti causing extensive damage in the capital Port-au-Prince and involving, according to estimates by the International Red Cross and the UN, about 3 million people.
13 January 1915 Il Marsica earthquake, also known as the Avezzano earthquake, strikes Abruzzo and Lazio with a magnitude of 7,0, causing damage and casualties across a large area of central Italy.
13 January 1985 Start the so-called "snowfall of the century" on northern Italy: maximum expression of the extraordinary cold wave that affected the country in the first half of January 1985, for four days it will cause serious inconvenience in all the territories concerned.
14 January 1968 In the night a violent 6.4 magnitude earthquake hits the Belice Valley, a large area of western Sicily, involving territories in the provinces of Trapani, Agrigento and Palermo.
17 January 1773 The British Royal Navy vessel HMS Resolution, captained by British explorer James Cook, is the first ship to cross the Antarctic Circle during Captain Cook's second voyage, commissioned by the British government to establish the existence or otherwise of the hypothetical continent "Terra Australis". The expedition effectively ended with the discovery of the Antarctic continent.
19 January 1915 After presenting it to the public for the first time at the Paris Motor Show in December 1910, the engineer Georges Claude obtained the patent for the neon lamp.
21 January 1908 The Eiffel tower houses a new antenna for the long distance radio transmission.
23 January 1957 The American toy manufacturer Wham-O inaugurates the industrial production of the plastic disc originally called "Pluto Platter", which will become the Frisbee game.
25 January 1972 At about 21:00, a violent earthquake hits Ancona, causing extensive damage in the historic part of the city and giving rise to a seismic sequence that will affect the area for several months, causing important economic repercussions for the Marche capital.
26 January 1500 The Spanish explorer Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, captain of the Niña during Christopher Columbus' voyage to the New World, is swept away by the currents of a storm and discovers the northern coasts of present-day Brazil: however, due to what was established with the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, Spain could not claim the territory which therefore went to Portugal.
27 January 1880 Thomas Edison gets in the United States the patent for the incandescent electric lamp.
27 January 1888 In Washington, USA, The National Geographic Society is founded, one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world.
28 January 1958 The Danish entrepreneur Ole Kirk Kristiansen patents the new version of lego bricks, with the particular shape that characterizes the assembly. The name, already conceived in 1934, derives from the union of two Danish words, "Leg godt"i.e. "play well".
28 January 1986 73 seconds after the launch of its tenth mission from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Space Shuttle Challenger explodes in flight.
29 January 1886 The German engineer Karl Benz patents the Patent Motorwagen in Germany: three-wheeled and also nicknamed “Veloped”, is considered the first automobile in history with an internal combustion engine.
30 January 1996 The Japanese amateur astronomer Yuji Hyakutake discovers Comet Hyakutake, referred to as the Great Comet of 1996, which passed very close to Earth in March of the same year and was seen by large numbers of people around the world.
31 January 1930 Enter the trade "Scotch tape", the adhesive tape of the American multinational 3M Company invented by the American journalist Richard Drew: it will arrive in Europe in 1937.