Today is Thursday, Jan. 31, the 31st day of 2019. There are 334 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Jan. 31, 1971, astronauts Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa blasted off aboard Apollo 14 on a mission to the moon.
On this date:
In 1606, Englishman Guy Fawkes, convicted of high treason for his part in the “Gunpowder Plot,” was set to be hanged, drawn and quartered, but broke his neck after falling or jumping from the scaffold.
In 1863, during the Civil War, the First South Carolina Volunteers, an all-black Union regiment composed of former slaves, was mustered into federal service at Beaufort, South Carolina.
In 1865, the U.S. House of Representatives joined the Senate in passing the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution abolishing slavery, sending it to states for ratification. (The amendment was adopted in December 1865.) Gen. Robert E. Lee was named general-in-chief of the Confederate States Army by President Jefferson Davis.
In 1917, during World War I, Germany served notice that it was beginning a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.
In 1929, revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his family were expelled from the Soviet Union.
In 1945, Pvt. Eddie Slovik, 24, became the first U.S. soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion as he was shot by an American firing squad in France.
In 1950, President Harry S. Truman announced he had ordered development of the hydrogen bomb.
In 1958, the United States entered the Space Age with its first successful launch of a satellite, Explorer 1, from Cape Canaveral.
In 1961, NASA launched Ham the Chimp aboard a Mercury-Redstone rocket from Cape Canaveral; Ham was recovered safely from the Atlantic Ocean following his 16 1/2-minute suborbital flight.
In 1990, McDonald’s Corp. opened its first fast-food restaurant in Moscow.
In 2000, an Alaska Airlines MD-83 jet crashed into the Pacific Ocean off Port Hueneme, California, killing all 88 people aboard.
In 2005, Jury selection began in Santa Maria, California, for Michael Jackson’s child molestation trial. (Jackson was later acquitted.)