Historical Events on 31 Jan

Historical Events on 31 Jan

1504 - France cedes Naples to Aragon.
1606 - Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes is executed for his plotting against Parliament and James I of England.
1747 - The first venereal diseases clinic opens at London Lock Hospital.
1814 - Gervasio Antonio de Posadas becomes Supreme Director of Argentina.
1846 - After the Milwaukee Bridge War, Juneautown and Kilbourntown unified as the City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
1849 - Corn Laws are abolished in the United Kingdom (following legislation in 1846).
1862 - Alvan Graham Clark observes the first white dwarf star, a companion of Sirius, through an eighteen inch telescope at Northwestern University.
1865 - American Civil War: Confederate General Robert E. Lee becomes general-in-chief.
1867 - Maronite nationalist leader Youssef Karam leaves Lebanon on board of a French ship for Algeria
1876 - The United States orders all Native Americans to move into reservations.
1891 - The first attempt of a Portuguese republican revolution brakes out in the northern city of Porto.
1900 - Datu Muhammad Salleh is assassinated in Kampung Teboh, Tambuan, ending the Mat Salleh Rebellion
1915 - World War I: Germany uses poison gas against Russia
1917 - World War I: Germany announces its U-boats will engage in unrestricted submarine warfare.
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.
1936 - The Green Hornet radio show debuts.
1941 - Layforce set sail.
1944 - World War II: American forces land on Kwajalein Atoll and other islands in the Japanese-held Marshall Islands.
1944 - World War II: During Anzio campaign 1st Ranger Battalion (Darby's Rangers) was destroyed behind enemy lines in a heavily outnumbered encounter at Battle of Cisterna, Italy.
1945 - US Army private Eddie Slovik is executed, the first American soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion.
1946 - Yugoslavia's new constitution, modeling the Soviet Union, establishes six constituent republics (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia).
1950 - 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.
1956 - Guy Mollet becomes Prime Minister of France.
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 - James Van Allen discovers the Van Allen radiation belt.
1958 - Explorer program: Explorer 1 - The first successful launch of an American satellite into orbit.
1961 - Project Mercury: Mercury-Redstone 2 - Ham the Chimp travels into outer space.
1966 - Luna program: soviet union's unmanned spacecraft Luna 9 is launched.
1968 - Viet Cong attack the United States embassy in Saigon.
1968 - Nauru declares independence from Australia.
1970 - A Saskatchewan Court convicts 17-year-old hippie David Milgaard of murder; he is sentenced to life in prison. He spent 23 years in jail until April 14, 1992 when DNA evidence proves him innocent of all charges.
1971 - Apollo program: Apollo 14 Mission - 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, begin in Detroit, Michigan.
1980 - Thirty-nine people burn to death in the occupation of the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala.
1990 - The first McDonald's in the Soviet Union opens in Moscow, USSR.
1995 - President Bill Clinton authorizes a $20 billion loan to Mexico to stabilize its economy.
1996 - An explosives-filled truck rams into the gates of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka in Colombo, Sri Lanka killing at least 86 and injuring 1,400.
2000 - Alaska Airlines flight 261 MD-83, experiencing horizontal stabilizer problems, crashes in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Point Mugu, California, killing all 88 persons aboard.
2001 - In the Netherlands a Scottish court convicts a Libyan and acquits another for their part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 which crashed into Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.
2003 - The Waterfall rail accident occurs near Waterfall, New South Wales, Australia.
2007 - Suspects are arrested in Birmingham in the UK, accused of plotting the kidnap, holding and eventual beheading of a serving Muslim British soldier in Iraq.