31 January History
- 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.
- 1788 - The Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart dies.
- 1835 - A man with two pistols misfires at President Andrew Jackson at the White House.
- 1865 - House of Representatives approves a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery.
- 1911 - The German Reichstag exempts royal families from tax obligations.
- 1915 - Germans use poison gas on the Russians at Bolimov.
- 1915 - German U-boats sink two British steamers in the English Channel.
- 1916 - President Woodrow Wilson refuses the compromise on Lusitania reparations.
- 1917 - Germany resumes unlimited sub warfare, warning that all neutral ships that are in the war zone will be attacked.
- 1935 - The Soviet premier tells Japan to get out of Manchuria.
- 1943 - The Battle of Stalingrad ends as small groups of German soldiers of the Sixth Army surrender to the victorious Red Army forces.
- 1944 - U.S. troops under Vice Adm. Spruance land on Kwajalien atoll in the Marshall Islands.
- 1950 - Paris protests the Soviet recognition of Ho Chi Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
- 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.
- 1976 - Ernesto Miranda, famous from the Supreme Court ruling on Miranda vs. Arizona is stabbed to death.
- 1981 - Lech Walesa announces an accord in Poland, giving Saturdays off to laborers.
31 January Birthdays
- 1734 - Robert Morris, signatory of the Declaration of Independence.
- 1797 - Franz Schubert, Austrian composer (C Major Symphony, The Unfinished Symphony).
- 1919 - Jackie Robinson, first African-American baseball player in the modern major leagues.
- 1925 - Benjamin Hooks, civil rights leader.