January 31 in History

Historical Events on January 31

314

Pope Sylvester I succeeds Pope Miltiades.
1504

France cedes Naples to Aragon.
1578

The Battle of Gembloux takes place.
1606

Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes is executed for plotting against Parliament and King James.
1747

The first venereal diseases clinic opens at London Lock Hospital.
1801

John Marshall is appointed the Chief Justice of the United States.
1814

Gervasio Antonio de Posadas becomes Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (present-day Argentina).
1846

After the Milwaukee Bridge War, Juneautown and Kilbourntown unify as the City of Milwaukee.
1848

John C. Frémont is court-martialed for mutiny and disobeying orders.
1849

Corn Laws are abolished in the United Kingdom pursuant to legislation in 1846.
1862

Alvan Graham Clark discovers the white dwarf star Sirius B, a companion of Sirius, through an 18.5-inch (47 cm) telescope now located at Northwestern University.
1865

American Civil War: The United States Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery and submits it to the states for ratification.
1865

American Civil War: Confederate General Robert E. Lee becomes general-in-chief.
1891

History of Portugal: The first attempt at a Portuguese republican revolution breaks out in the northern city of Porto.
1897

Czechoslav Trade Union Association is founded in Prague.
1900

Datu Muhammad Salleh is killed in Kampung Teboh, Tambunan, ending the Mat Salleh Rebellion.
1915

World War I: Germany is the first to make large-scale use of poison gas in warfare in the Battle of Bolimów against Russia.
1917

World War I: Germany announces that its U-boats will resume unrestricted submarine warfare after a two-year hiatus.
1918

A series of accidental collisions on a misty Scottish night leads to the loss of two Royal Navy submarines with over a hundred lives, and damage to another five British warships.
1919

The Battle of George Square takes place in Glasgow, Scotland.
1929

The Soviet Union exiles Leon Trotsky.
1930

3M begins marketing Scotch Tape.
1942

World War II: Allied forces are defeated by the Japanese at the Battle of Malaya and retreat to Singapore.
1943

World War II: German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrenders to the Soviets at Stalingrad, followed 2 days later by the remainder of his Sixth Army, ending one of the war's fiercest battles.
1944

World War II: American forces land on Kwajalein Atoll and other islands in the Japanese-held Marshall Islands.
1944

World War II: During the Anzio campaign the 1st Ranger Battalion (Darby's Rangers) is destroyed behind enemy lines in a heavily outnumbered encounter at Battle of Cisterna, Italy.
1945

US Army private Eddie Slovik is executed for desertion, the first such execution of an American soldier since the Civil War.
1945

World War II: About 3,000 inmates from the Stutthof concentration camp are forcibly marched into the Baltic Sea at Palmnicken (now Yantarny, Russia) and executed.
1945

World War II: The end of fighting in the Battle of Hill 170 during the Burma Campaign, in which the British 3 Commando Brigade repulsed a Japanese counterattack on their positions and precipitated a general retirement from the Arakan Peninsula.
1946

Yugoslavia's new constitution, modeling that of the Soviet Union, establishes six constituent republics (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia).
1946

The Democratic Republic of Vietnam introduces the đồng to replace the French Indochinese piastre at par.
1949

These Are My Children, the first television daytime soap opera is broadcast by the NBC station in Chicago.
1950

United States President Harry S. Truman announces a program to develop the hydrogen bomb.
1953

A North Sea flood causes over 1,800 deaths in the Netherlands and over 300 in the United Kingdom
1957

Eight people on the ground in Pacoima, California are killed following the mid-air collision between a Douglas DC-7 airliner and a Northrop F-89 Scorpion fighter jet.
1958

The first successful American satellite detects the Van Allen radiation belt.
1961

Project Mercury: Mercury-Redstone 2: Ham the Chimp travels into outer space.
1966

The Soviet Union launches the unmanned Luna 9 spacecraft as part of the Luna program.
1968

Vietnam War: Viet Cong guerrillas attack the United States embassy in Saigon, and other attacks, in the early morning hours, later grouped together as the Tet Offensive.
1968

Nauru gains independence from Australia.
1971

Apollo program: Apollo 14: Astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell, aboard a Saturn V, lift off for a mission to the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon.
1971

The Winter Soldier Investigation, organized by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War to publicize war crimes and atrocities by Americans and allies in Vietnam, begins in Detroit.
1996

An explosives-filled truck rams into the gates of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka in Colombo, killing at least 86 people and injuring 1,400.
2000

Alaska Airlines Flight 261 crash: An MD-83, experiencing horizontal stabilizer problems, crashes in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Point Mugu, California, killing all 88 aboard.
2001

In the Netherlands, a Scottish court convicts Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and acquits another Libyan citizen for their part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.
2009

In Kenya, at least 113 people are killed and over 200 injured following an oil spillage ignition in Molo, days after a massive fire at a Nakumatt supermarket in Nairobi killed at least 25 people.

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