TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Sunday, Jan. 31, 2021.

Today’s highlight in history

On Jan. 31, 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.)

On this date

In 1863, during the Civil War, the First South Carolina Volunteers, an all-black Union regiment composed of many escaped slaves, was mustered into federal service at Beaufort, S.C.

In 1919, baseball Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson was born in Cairo, Ga.

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 1956, the creator of “Winnie-the-pooh,” British author A.A. Milne, died at age 74.

In 1958, the U.S. 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 Mercuryredstone rocket from Cape Canaveral; Ham was recovered safely from the Atlantic Ocean following his 16 1⁄ -minute

2 suborbital flight.

In 1971, astronauts Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa blasted off aboard Apollo 14 on a mission to the moon.

In 2000, an Alaska Airlines MD-83 jet crashed into the Pacific Ocean off Port Hueneme in California, killing all 88 people aboard.

In 2001, a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands convicted one Libyan and acquitted a second, in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

In 2005, jury selection began in Santa Maria for Michael Jackson’s child molestation trial. (He was later acquitted.)

Today’s birthdays

Composer Philip Glass is 84. Actor Stuart Margolin is 81. Actor Jessica Walter is 80. Musician Charlie Musselwhite is 77. Actor Glynn Turman is

74. Baseball Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan is 74. Actor Jonathan Banks is 74. Singermusician Harry Wayne Casey (KC and the Sunshine Band) is

70. Singer Johnny Rotten is 65. Actor Kelly Lynch is 62. Actor Minnie Driver is 51. Actor Portia de Rossi is 48. Comedian Bobby Moynihan is 44. Actor Kerry Washington is 44. Singer Justin Timberlake is 40. Actor Tyler Ritter is 36. Singermusician Marcus Mumford is

34. Actor Joel Courtney is 25.