NOW & THEN
31 JANUARY
1858: The five-funnelled 692ft-long Great Eastern, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and John Scott Russell, was launched at Millwall.
1867: The lions arrived in Trafalgar Square, London. The four bronze figures at the base of Nelson’s Column were completed by Sir Edwin Landseer.
1876: The United States government banished all Sioux Indians to reservations, starting the Sioux wars.
1910: Doctor Crippen poisoned his wife, Cora, for which he was executed at Pentonville on 23 November.
1918: In a chaotic series of collisions involving battleships, destroyers and submarines during a night naval exercise off the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth, 103 officers and ratings were lost. Two K-class submarines were sunk and two other submarines and a cruiser were seriously damaged.
1928: Leon Trotsky exiled from Russia by Stalin.
1943: German troops surrendered at Stalingrad.
1953: British Rail passenger and car ferry, Princess Victoria, capsized and sank, with the loss of 133 lives, in a storm off Irish coast at Donaghadee, after her stern doors had been smashed soon after leaving Stranraer.
1953: Sixty-six crewmen were saved when cargo vessel Clan Macquarrie went aground near Borve, Lewis. The rescue, in winds gusting to 100mph, was the biggest ever carried out using breeches buoys in a single operation.
1958: America’s first satellite, Explorer I, was launched from Cape Canaveral.
1971: Apollo 14 launched with Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell. Shepard and Mitchell later made the third Moon landing.
1974: Pan American Airways plane crashed on American Samoa, killing 95 of 101 people aboard.
1983: The wearing of seat belts in cars became compulsory in Britain.
1988: Thousands of Solidarity supporters marched in Gdansk to protest at price increases announced by Polish government.
1989: A symbolic burial service, with a single casket of ashes, was held for the victims of the Lockerbie disaster.
1990: Huge queues formed as Mcdonald’s opened its first hamburger joint in Moscow.
1992: Britain and Russia were embarking on “a new era of friendship” after a meeting in London between John Major and Boris Yeltsin.
1994: The Rover car company was sold to BMW for £1.7billion.
1996: More than 80 people died and 1,400 were injured when Tamil Tiger guerrillas exploded a lorry bomb in the centre of the Sri Lankan capital Colombo.
2000: Doctor Harold Shipman, 54, was given 15 life sentences for the murder of 15 of his female patients at Hyde, Greater Manchester, between March 1995 and June 1998. Police said they were investigating at least another 130 deaths in which he may have been involved.
2011: BMI announced its decision to axe flights between Glasgow and Heathrow.