January 31st
1606
Guy Fawkes, convicted of treason for his part in the "Gunpowder Plot" against the
English Parliament and King James I, was executed.
1865
General Robert E. Lee was named General-in-Chief of all the Confererate armies.
1917
During World War I, Germany served notice it was beginning a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.
1929
Revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his family were expelled from the Soviet Union.
1944
During World War II, U.S. forces began a successful invasion of Kwajalein Atoll and other parts of the
Japanese held Marshall Islands.
1945
Private 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.
1949
The first TV daytime soap opera, "These are my Children" began broadcasting from the NBC station in Chicago, Illinois.
(It lasted all of four weeks.)
1950
President Harry S. Truman announced he had ordered development of the hydrogen bomb.
1958
The United States entered the Space Age with its first successful launch of the Satellite Explorer I into orbit.
1971
Astronauts Alan Shepard Jr., Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa blasted off aboard
Apollo 14 on a mission to the moon.
1990
McDonald's Corporation opened its first fast food restaurant in Moscow, Russia.