Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/January 31

This is a list of selected January 31 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.

To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.

← January 30	February 1 →

Staging area

Images

Use only ONE image at a time

• 
  Mercury-Redstone 2
• 
  Damage caused by the Pemex explosion
• 
  Zuid-Beveland in the Netherlands during the North Sea flood of 1953
• 
  Milwaukee skyline
• 
  Explorer 1 satellite
• 
  Sirius A (center) and
  Sirius B (bottom left)
• 
  Comet Hyakutake
• 
  Ham the Chimp
• 
  Doug Williams

Ineligible

Blurb	Reason
1862 – American astronomer Alvan Graham Clark first observed the faint white dwarf companion of Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky.	Too much uncited
1876 – The United States ordered all Native Americans to move into reservations.	fact not in article
1917 – World War I: Germany announced its U-boats would resume unrestricted submarine warfare, less than two years after having suspended its attacks after the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.	refimprove
1942 – Second World War: Allied forces retreated from British Malaya to Singapore, ceding control of the country to Japan.	lots of CN tags
1945 – World War II: Eddie Slovik became the only American soldier executed for desertion since the American Civil War.	refimprove
1945 – Second World War: The British 3rd Commando Brigade defeated the Japanese 54th Division at the Battle of Hill 170, causing Japanese forces to withdraw from Burma's Arakan peninsula.	date not cited
1946 – In the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a new constitution established the six constituent republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.	unreferenced sections
1953 – The North Sea flood and its associated storm began hitting the coastlines of several European countries along the North Sea, eventually killing more than 2,000 people.	refimprove
1958 – Explorer 1, the United States' first satellite, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and became the first spacecraft to detect the Van Allen radiation belt.	refimprove section
1971 – The Vietnam Veterans Against the War opened the Winter Soldier Investigation, a three-day media event to publicize war crimes and other atrocities by American forces and their allies during the Vietnam War.	refimprove section
1996 – Japanese amateur astronomer Yuji Hyakutake discovered Comet Hyakutake, which was making one of the closest cometary approaches of the previous 200 years.	lots of CN tags (9), especially for an FA
2001 – Scottish judges sitting in court in the Netherlands convicted Libyan national Abdelbaset al-Megrahi of 270 counts of murder in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.	lots of CN tags (9), especially in one section
2007 – Suspects were arrested in Birmingham, England, accused of plotting to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier serving in Iraq.	lots of CN tags
2011 – Days after a major blizzard struck the northeastern United States and Canada, a second, more powerful storm swept across the continent from the Mountain States to the eastern seaboard and caused $1.8 billion in damage.	expansion
Preity Zinta |b|1975	date not consistent among the sources

Eligible

• 1208 – King Sverker II of Sweden was defeated at the Battle of Lena by Eric Knutsson, who succeeded to the throne.
• 1578 – Eighty Years' War: Spain won a crushing victory at the Battle of Gembloux, threatening the States General of the Netherlands and contributing to its move from Brussels to Antwerp.
• 1747 – The London Lock Hospital, the first voluntary hospital specialising in the treatment of venereal diseases, opened.
• 1900 – Datu Muhammad Salleh, leader of a series of major disturbances in North Borneo, was shot dead in Tambunan, but his followers did not give up for five more years.
• 1957 – A DC-7B operated by Douglas Aircraft collided in mid-air with a U.S. Air Force F-89 and crashed into a schoolyard in Pacoima, California.
• 1961 – Aboard NASA's Mercury-Redstone 2, Ham the Chimp became the first hominid launched into outer space.
• 1988 – Doug Williams (pictured) became the first African-American quarterback to play in a Super Bowl, leading the Washington Redskins to victory in Super Bowl XXII.
• 2000 – Alaska Airlines Flight 261, experiencing problems with its horizontal stabilizer system, crashed in the Pacific Ocean off Anacapa Island, California, killing all 88 people on board.
• 2010 – James Cameron's Avatar became the first film to earn over US$2 billion worldwide.
• 2013 – A gas leak underneath the Pemex Executive Tower in Mexico City caused an explosion that killed at least 37 people and injured another 121.
• Born/died this day: | James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby |b|1607| Jost Bürgi |d|1632| Manuel Alberti |d|1811| Zina D. H. Young |b|1821| James G. Blaine |b|1830| Charles W. Lyons |b|1868| Cilibi Moise |d|1870| Eric Burhop |b|1911| Justin Timberlake |b|1981| Eleanor Holm |d|2004|

Notes

• Pope Sergius III appears on January 29, so Sylvester I should not appear in the same year
• Supreme Court of the United States appears on February 1, so John Marshall should not appear in the same year.

January 31: Independence Day in Nauru (1968)

Bust of Sylvester I

• 314 – Sylvester I (bust depicted), during whose pontificate many churches in Rome were constructed by Constantine the Great, began his reign as pope.
• 1919 – Intense rioting over labour conditions broke out in Glasgow, Scotland.
• 1997 – Final Fantasy VII, the first video game in the Final Fantasy franchise to use 3-D computer graphics, was released.
• 2007 – Emergency officials in Boston mistakenly identified LED placards depicting characters from Aqua Teen Hunger Force as IEDs, causing a panic.

• John Francis Regis (b. 1597)
• Franz Schubert (b. 1797)
• Jackie Robinson (b. 1919)
• Adelaide Tambo (d. 2007)

More anniversaries:

• January 30
• January 31
• February 1