January 31

Guy Fawkes and several other Gunpowder Plot conspirators are executed in London.

Guy Fawkes and his fellow Gunpowder Plot conspirators were dragged through London streets and subjected to the brutal punishment of hanging, drawing, and quartering, a public spectacle meant to deter future treason against the crown. The failed plot to blow up Parliament and King James I is still commemorated annually in Britain with bonfires and fireworks on Guy Fawkes Night each November.

The U.S. Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, and sends it to the states for ratification.

The House vote, following the Senate's earlier approval, sent the amendment abolishing slavery to the states for ratification, a milestone President Lincoln had lobbied hard for despite significant opposition. The amendment was ratified by the required number of states by December 1865, permanently ending slavery throughout the United States, months after the Emancipation Proclamation had already freed enslaved people only in Confederate territory.

Germany makes the first large-scale use of poison gas in warfare against Russian troops at the Battle of Bolimów.

German forces fired thousands of tear-gas-filled artillery shells at Russian troops on the Eastern Front, an early experiment in chemical warfare that largely failed due to the shells' liquid contents freezing in the winter cold rather than vaporizing effectively. Germany would escalate to far deadlier chlorine gas attacks against French and Canadian troops at Ypres just months later.

German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrenders to Soviet forces at Stalingrad, a turning point of World War II.

Paulus's surrender at Stalingrad, defying Hitler's explicit orders to fight to the death, ended one of the bloodiest battles in human history, with well over a million total casualties on both sides. The catastrophic German defeat marked a decisive turning point on the Eastern Front, after which German forces were pushed steadily back toward Berlin over the following two years.

The United States launches Explorer 1, its first satellite, which discovers the Van Allen radiation belt.

Launched hastily by the U.S. Army following the Soviet Union's earlier Sputnik satellites, Explorer 1 carried instruments designed by physicist James Van Allen that detected an unexpectedly intense band of radiation trapped by Earth's magnetic field. The discovery of what became known as the Van Allen radiation belts was one of the first major scientific findings of the space age.

The chimpanzee Ham is launched into space aboard a Mercury-Redstone rocket, paving the way for American human spaceflight.

Ham, a chimpanzee trained to perform simple tasks in response to lights and sounds during the flight, demonstrated that a living creature could survive spaceflight and still function afterward, successfully completing his tasks despite a rougher-than-planned suborbital trajectory. His safe recovery, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean, cleared the way for Alan Shepard's first American human spaceflight just months later.

Viet Cong forces attack the U.S. embassy in Saigon as part of the wider Tet Offensive.

As part of the broader Tet Offensive launched across South Vietnam, a Viet Cong commando squad breached the U.S. embassy compound in Saigon, holding the grounds for several hours before being killed or captured by American and South Vietnamese forces. Television images of fighting inside the embassy compound stunned the American public and undercut official assurances that the war was nearly won.

Apollo 14 launches toward the Moon's Fra Mauro highlands.

Apollo 14, commanded by Alan Shepard, the first American in space, launched toward the Moon's rugged Fra Mauro highlands, a landing site originally targeted by the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. Shepard famously hit two golf balls across the lunar surface during the mission, and Apollo 14 successfully collected rock samples that helped advance understanding of the Moon's geological history.

A Scottish court convicts Libyan agent Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie.

Al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, was convicted by a special Scottish court convened in the Netherlands for planting the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270 people. He was controversially released from a life sentence in 2009 on compassionate grounds due to terminal illness, a decision that remains contested by victims' families.

The United Kingdom formally leaves the European Union after 47 years of membership.

The UK's departure, following the 2016 Brexit referendum and years of contentious negotiations, marked the first time a member state had left the European Union since its founding. A transition period kept the UK following EU rules for most of the following year while a new trading relationship was negotiated, formally taking effect at the start of 2021.