[CaptainCrunch]

Jan 31


314 – Pope Sylvester I succeeds Pope Miltiades.

1504 – The Treaty of Lyon ends the Italian War, confirming French domination of northern Italy, while Spain receives the Kingdom of Naples.

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.

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.

2012 – The Toyota Corolla is known as the best-selling car of all time. Selling over 37.5 million units.