14 gennaio

Julius sent Giuliano da Sangallo, who brought Michelangelo. Sangallo knew it at once as the group Pliny the Elder had praised. The pope bought it for the Belvedere, where it still is.

Ahmad Shah Durrani of Afghanistan destroyed the Maratha army of Sadashivrao Bhau in one of the largest battles of the century; tens of thousands were killed, many of them after the battle. The Maratha check opened the way for the Company.

Amundsen built his base on the floating ice shelf itself, some 4 kilometres in from the edge: a start about 96 kilometres nearer the Pole than Scott’s. The hut had been put up and numbered in his garden at home, then taken down and stowed in the hold.

127 days of open sea without touching land, east through the Southern Ocean, round the world’s bottom to the Ross Sea. Nilsen had reckoned they would reach the Barrier on 15 January 1911; they moored on the 14th. A sail stretched over the deck kept the dogs in shade through the tropics.

Sergei Korolev died during surgery, aged 59. The Soviet public had known him only as the anonymous Chief Designer; his name was published for the first time in his obituary. The Moon programme never recovered its driving force.

TF1 gave the young presenter Sidney a weekly show built around breaking, DJing and rap, the first hip-hop programme on national television anywhere. It lasted the year, and a generation of French rappers and dancers later named it as where they started.

Announcing a return to the Moon, Bush said the shuttle would finish the space station and then retire, by 2010. The last flight slipped to July 2011.

After a descent of about two and a half hours, the European probe landed on damp, sandy ground strewn with rounded pebbles of ice: the most distant landing ever made. Cassini listened for 72 minutes before it set below the horizon.

After 23 years in power and four weeks of protest, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali flew to Saudi Arabia. The first ruler brought down by the uprisings.