1606 Guy Fawkes is hanged, drawn and quartered for his part in the Gunpowder Plot, an attempt to blow up Parliament.
1620 Virginia colony leaders write to the Virginia Company in England, asking for more orphaned apprentices for employment.
1788 The Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart dies.
1835 A man with two pistols misfires at President Andrew Jackson at the White House.
1865 House of Representatives approves a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery.
1911 The German Reichstag exempts royal families from tax obligations.
1915 Germans use poison gas on the Russians at Bolimov.
1915 German U-boats sink two British steamers in the English Channel.
1916 President Woodrow Wilson refuses the compromise on Lusitania reparations.
1917 Germany resumes unlimited sub warfare, warning that all neutral ships that are in the war zone will be attacked.
1935 The Soviet premier tells Japan to get out of Manchuria.
1943 The Battle of Stalingrad ends as small groups of German soldiers of the Sixth Army surrender to the victorious Red Army forces.
1944 U.S. troops under Vice Adm. Spruance land on Kwajalien atoll in the Marshall Islands.
1950 Paris protests the Soviet recognition of Ho Chi Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
1966 U.S. planes resume bombing of North Vietnam after a 37-day pause.
1968 In Vietnam, the Tet Offensive begins as Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers attack strategic and civilian locations throughout South Vietnam.
1976 Ernesto Miranda, famous from the Supreme Court ruling on Miranda vs. Arizona is stabbed to death.
1981 Lech Walesa announces an accord in Poland, giving Saturdays off to laborers.
Born on January 31
1734 Robert Morris, signatory of the Declaration of Independence.
1797 Franz Schubert, Austrian composer (C Major Symphony, The Unfinished Symphony).
1919 Jackie Robinson, first African-American baseball player in the modern major leagues.
1925 Benjamin Hooks, civil rights leader.