Five historical events from years ending in '23 that helped shape the world

As the planet rings in 2023, here is a look back at five events since 1523 that left their respective marks on our world – for better or for worse.

February 16th, 1923: After three months of excavations, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his team entered the burial chamber of King Tutankhamun, an Egyptian pharaoh from the Fourteenth Century Before the Common Era who died in 1323 BCE at the age of nineteen. He was the penultimate ruler of the New Kingdom's tumultuous Eighteenth Dynasty. The vast treasure that was entombed with Tutankhamun's mummified remains is considered one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of all time. Research suggests that a combination of malaria and a genetic bone disorder due to inbreeding killed the young monarch. DNA testing indicates that his parents were either first cousins or siblings. While it is accepted that Pharaoh Akhenaten was Tutankhamun's father, the debate about the true identity of his mother is ongoing.

December 2nd, 1823: President James Monroe introduced the Monroe Doctrine in an address to Congress, warning European governments against meddling in the affairs of the United States of America and other Western nations. The edict, according to the National Archives, also established that the US "would not tolerate further colonization or puppet monarchs." The Monroe Doctrine was based on the colonial expansionist concept of Manifest Destiny and its impact on American foreign policy would endure into modern times.

READ MORE: Children of the Monroe Doctrine: The Militarized Roots of America's Border Calamity

August 26th, 1723: Ninety-year-old Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek – who discovered microorganisms after inventing the microscope – succumbed to a mysterious illness that would one day bear his name. Van Leeuwenhoek's Disease is a central nervous system condition whose primary symptom is severe abdominal spasms, or "diaphragm flutter."

June 19th, 1623: French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal was born. Regarded by history as a genius, Pascal "invented an early digital calculator, a syringe, a hydraulic press, and the roulette wheel" and "made important discoveries in atmospheric pressure, and proved the existence of a vacuum above the atmosphere," per Study.com. Pascal is also renowned for establishing the foundations of the scientific method, along with his existential perspectives on life, nature, and humanity's relationship with the divine.

1523: Spanish-Italian cartographer Giovanni Vespucci completes the Turin Planisphere, deemed by historians as "the earliest surviving map representing the Strait of Magellan in the southern edges of America and the Moluccas islands in the Pacific. This is very remarkable, as the circumnavigation of the world made by Magellan and Elcano (1519-1522) was completed by Elcano only one year before the map was made."

READ MORE: 'A watershed moment': House passes bill allowing Puerto Rico to determine its own destiny