TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, JAN. 31, the 31st day of 2018. There are 334 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:
On this date in 1958, the United States entered the Space Age with its first successful launch of a satellite, Explorer 1, from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
In 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.) Gen. Robert E. Lee was named general-in-chief of the Confederate States Army by President Jefferson Davis.
In 1917, during World War I, Germany served notice that it was beginning a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.
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 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 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 2000, an Alaska Airlines MD-83 jet crashed into the Pacific Ocean off Port Hueneme, California, killing all 88 people aboard.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actress Carol Channing is 97. Composer Philip Glass is 81. Blues singer-musician Charlie Musselwhite is 74. Actor Glynn Turman is 72. Baseball Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan and actor Jonathan Banks are 71. Singer-musician Harry Wayne Casey (KC and the Sunshine Band) is 67. Rock singer Johnny Rotten is 62. Actress Kelly Lynch and actor Anthony LaPaglia are 59. Singer-musician Lloyd Cole is 57. Actress Paulette Braxton is 53. Rock musician Al Jaworski (Jesus Jones) is 52. Actress Minnie Driver is 48. Actress Portia de Rossi is 45. Actorcomedian Bobby Moynihan and actress Kerry Washington are 41. Bluegrass singer-musician Becky Buller is 39. Singer Justin Timberlake is 37. Actor Tyler Ritter is 33. Country singer Tyler Hubbard (Florida Georgia Line) and folkrock singer-musician Marcus Mumford (Mumford and Sons) are 31.