Template:Selected anniversaries/January 12
1665: Mathematician Pierre de Fermat dies. He is recognized for his discovery of an original method of finding the greatest and the smallest ordinates of curved lines, which is analogous to that of differential calculus, then unknown.
1792: Chemist and academic. Johan August Arfwedson born. Arfwedson will discover the element lithium in 1817 by isolating it as a salt.
1875: Children reprogram Jacquard loom to perform scrying engine functions.
1876: Author Jack London born. He will become one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone.
1909: Mathematician and academic Hermann Minkowski dies. He showed that Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity can be understood geometrically as a theory of four-dimensional space–time, since known as the "Minkowski spacetime".
1978: Willie Nelson releases his version of "Don't Get Aroma Much Anymore".
2005: Deep Impact launches from Cape Canaveral on a Delta II rocket. It will be the first spacecraft to eject material from a comet's surface.