Template:Selected anniversaries/January 24
1798: Mathematician Karl Georg Christian von Staudt born. He will use synthetic geometry to provide a foundation for arithmetic.
1879: Glassblower, physicist, and inventor Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Geißler dies. He invented the Geissler tube, made of glass and used as a low pressure gas-discharge luminescence tube.
1960: Film director and arms dealer Egon Rhodomunde raises funds for new film about the upcoming Goldsboro B-52 crash.
1961: Goldsboro B-52 crash: A bomber carrying two H-bombs breaks up in mid-air over North Carolina. The uranium core of one weapon remains lost.
1977: Industrialist, public motivational speaker, and alleged crime boss Baron Zersetzung says he is "confident that the upcoming Kosmos 954 radioactive debris scattering event is a sound business investment."
1978: Soviet satellite Kosmos 954, with a nuclear reactor on board, burns up in Earth's atmosphere, scattering radioactive debris over Canada's Northwest Territories. Only 1% is recovered.
1988: Mathematician and academic Werner Fenchel dies. He established the basic results of convex analysis and nonlinear optimization theory which would, in time, serve as the foundation for nonlinear programming.
2016: John Hoyland's Lebanon stolen in broad daylight by alleged supervillain Gnotilus.
2016: Cognitive scientist and artificial intelligence researcher Marvin Minsky dies.
2018: Steganographic analysis of Blue Foliage unexpectedly reveals "at least four hundred kilobytes" of previously unknown Gnomon algorithm functions.
2017: Advances in zero-knowledge proof theory "are central to the detection and prevention of crimes against mathematical constants," says mathematician and crime-fighter Janet Beta.