Template:Selected anniversaries/January 24
1798: Mathematician Karl Georg Christian von Staudt born. He will use synthetic geometry to provide a foundation for arithmetic.
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.
1972: New evidence suggests that The Eel Escapes Hydrolab is based on actual events.
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 supervillain Gnotilus.
2016: Cognitive scientist and artificial intelligence researcher Marvin Minsky dies.
2016: Advances in zero-knowledge proof theory "are central to the problem of mathematical reliability," says mathematician and crime-fighter Alice Beta.