TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS SATURDAY, JAN. 31, the 31st day of 2015. There are 334 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY: On this date in 1865, the U.S. House of Representatives joined the Senate in passing the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery, sending it to the states for ratification. (The amendment was adopted in December 1865.) Gen. Robert E. Lee was named general-in-chief of the Confederate States Army by President Jefferson Davis.
In 1606, Guy Fawkes, convicted of treason for his part in the Gunpowder Plot against the English Parliament and King James I, was executed.
In 1797, composer Franz Schubert was born in Vienna.
In 1929, revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his family were expelled from the Soviet Union.
In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Gold Reserve Act.
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 1958, the United States entered the Space Age with its first successful launch of a satellite into orbit, Explorer I.
In 1961, NASA launched Ham the Chimp aboard a Mercury-Redstone rocket from Cape Canaveral; Ham was recovered safely from the Atlantic Ocean after his 16 ½ -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 1980, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands announced she would abdicate on her birthday the following April, to be succeeded by her daughter, Princess Beatrix.
In 1990, McDonald’s Corp. opened its first fastfood restaurant in Moscow.
In 2000, an Alaska Airlines MD-83 jet crashed into the Pacific Ocean off Port Hueneme, Calif., killing all 88 people aboard.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actress Carol Channing is 94. Composer Philip Glass is 78. Former Interior Secretary James Watt and Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands, the former queen regent, are 77. Actress Jessica Walter and former U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., are 74. Baseball Hall-of-Famer Nolan Ryan and actor Jonathan Banks (TV: “Breaking Bad”) are 68. Singer-musician Harry Wayne Casey (KC and the Sunshine Band) is 64. Rock singer Johnny Rotten is 59. Singer-musician Lloyd Cole is 54. Rock musician Al Jaworski (Jesus Jones) is 49. Actress Minnie Driver is 45. Actress Portia de Rossi is 42. Actor-comedian Bobby Moynihan and actress Kerry Washington are 38. Singer Justin Timberlake is 34. Actor Tyler Ritter is 30. Country singer Tyler Hubbard (Florida Georgia Line) and folk-rock singer-musician Marcus Mumford ( Mumford and Sons) are 28.