On this day in conspiracies

The Deering passes the Cape Lookout lightship off North Carolina. A tall, thin, red-haired man with a foreign accent hails keeper Captain Thomas Jacobson through a megaphone, reporting that the ship has lost its anchors in a storm and asking that the owners be notified; Jacobson notes crew members milling on the quarterdeck, where they would not normally be allowed, but his radio is out and he cannot relay the message.

Yuri Yudin turns back early due to illness, becoming the expedition's sole survivor. The remaining nine continue without him.

The Hutton Report concludes that Kelly took his own life. The pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt gave the principal cause of death as bleeding from incised wounds to the left wrist, self-inflicted, with a co-proxamol overdose and significant undiagnosed coronary artery disease as contributory factors. The report finds no indication of third-party involvement.

Five of the convicted officers, Syed Faruque Rahman, Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan, Bazlul Huda, Mohiuddin Ahmed, and AKM Mohiuddin Ahmed, are hanged at Dhaka Central Jail. Others convicted in absentia remain fugitives abroad; one is reported to have died overseas, and a further convict is executed in 2020.

A large Chinese high-altitude balloon enters the Alaska air-defense identification zone, then crosses into Canadian airspace on 30 January and re-enters the continental United States over Idaho on 31 January. U.S. and Canadian defense commands track it from the outset.

Neuralink implants its first human participant, Noland Arbaugh, a man paralyzed below the shoulders after a diving accident. Within weeks he is shown using the implant to move a computer cursor, play chess and video games, and browse the web by intention alone. It is a real milestone, and it is immediately absorbed into the conspiracy narrative as 'proof' the chipping has begun.

In the first press briefing of the new Trump administration, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says the drones were largely authorized by the FAA for research and other purposes, along with hobbyist and recreational flights, and that curiosity made the phenomenon snowball. 'This was not the enemy,' she says. Some local officials and members of Congress press for more detail about what research was involved.

The FBI executes a search warrant at Fulton County's election operations center, seizing more than 650 boxes of original 2020 ballots, ballot images, tabulator tapes, and voter rolls. Gabbard is present at the scene, drawing immediate questions about why the intelligence chief attended a domestic evidence seizure.