TODAY HISTORY LESSON: JANUARY 31
1606 Guy Fawkes is hanged, drawn and quartered for his part in the Gunpowder Plot, an attempt to blow up Parliament.
1620 Virginia colony leaders write to the Virginia Company in England, asking for more orphaned apprentices for employment.
1835 A man with two pistols misfires at President Andrew Jackson at the White House.
1851 Gail Borden announces invention of evaporated milk
1865 Congress passes the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery in America (passes 121-24)
1911 Congress names San Francisco as Panamá Canal opening celebration site
1928 Scotch tape 1st marketed by 3-M Company
1934 FDR devalues the dollar in relation to gold at $35 per ounce
1940 The first social security check was issued to Ida Fuller for $22.54.
1943 The Battle of Stalingrad ends as small groups of German soldiers of the Sixth Army surrender to the victorious Red Army forces.
1945 Eddie Slovik, 1st American executed for desertion since Civil War
1950 U.S. President Truman announced that he had ordered development of the hydrogen bom
1958 The first U.S. earth satellite, Explorer I, was launched.
1961 Ham the Chimp travels into outer space. The chimpanzee survived the US Mercury Program test flight with just a bruised nose.
1966 U.S. planes resume bombing of North Vietnam after a 37-day pause.
1968 In Vietnam, the Tet Offensive begins as Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers attack strategic and civilian locations throughout South Vietnam.
1971 Astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr., Edgar D. Mitchell and Stuart A. Roosa blasted off aboard Apollo 14 on a mission to the moon.
1990 The first McDonald’s opened in Russia.
1995 U.S. President Clinton invoked presidential emergency authority to provide a $20 billion loan to Mexico to stabilize its economy.
1996 A suicide bombing in Sri Lanka kills 91 people
2001 A Scottish court in the Netherlands convicted one Libyan and acquitted a second in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that occurred in 1988.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
