January 18

• 

  532: The Nika riots fail in Constantinople. Nearly half the city is burned or otherwise destroyed, and tens of thousands of people are dead.

• 

  1802: Carl Friedrich Gauss read in the newspaper that Olbers had rediscovered Ceres. Gauss wrote to get the observations and a long friendship ensued. Gauss was such an avid newspaper reader that students nicknamed him the “newspaper bear” because of his habits in the library reading room. If someone was reading the paper he wanted he would sit glumly nearby and stare at them until they gave up the paper.

• 

  1825: Chemist Edward Frankland born. He will be one of the originators of organometallic chemistry, introducing the concept of combining power or valence.

• 

  1873: Mathematician, engineer, cartographer, economist, and politician Charles Dupin dies. In 1826 created the earliest known choropleth map.

• 

  1878: Physicist and academic Antoine César Becquerel dies. He pioneered the study of electric and luminescent phenomena.

• 

  1908: Mathematician, historian of science, theatre author, poet, and inventor Jacob Bronowski born.

• 

  1911: Physicist Shoichi Sakata born. Sakata will contribute theoretical work on the structure of the atom, proposing the Sakata model, an early precursor to the quark model. After World War II he will campaign for the peaceful uses of nuclear power.