From Historynet: Today in History January 31

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.