TODAY in History

Today is Sunday, Jan. 31, the 31st day of 2021. There are 334 days left in the year.

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, South Carolina.

• In 1919, baseball Hall-of-Famer Jackie Robinson was born in Cairo (KAY’-roh), 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-thePooh,” British author A.A. Milne, died at age 74.

• 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 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 (wy-NEE’-mee), 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.) SBC Communications Inc. announced it was acquiring AT&T Corp. for $16 billion.