January 31 birthdays & history

Famous people born on January 31

• 1797Franz Schubert, Austrian pianist and composer
• 1981Justin Timberlake, American singer-songwriter, dancer, and actor
• 1935Kenzaburō Ōe, Japanese author and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1938Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen of the Netherlands from 1980 to 2013
• 1923Norman Mailer, American journalist and author
• 1975Preity Zinta, Indian actress, producer, and television host
• 1543Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japanese shōgun
• 1929Rudolf Mössbauer, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1881Irving Langmuir, American chemist and physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1977Kerry Washington, American actress

What happened on January 31

• 314Sylvester I (bust depicted), during whose pontificate many churches in Rome were constructed by Constantine the Great, began his reign as pope.
• 1814Gervasio Antonio de Posadas becomes Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (present-day Argentina).
• 1862Alvan Graham Clark discovers the white dwarf star Sirius B, a companion of Sirius, through an 18.5-inch (47 cm) telescope now located at Northwestern University.
• 1891History of Portugal: The first attempt at a Portuguese republican revolution breaks out in the northern city of Porto.
• 1901Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters premieres at Moscow Art Theatre in Russia.
• 1946The Democratic Republic of Vietnam introduces the đồng to replace the French Indochinese piastre at par.
• 1949These Are My Children, the first television daytime soap opera, is broadcast by the NBC station in Chicago, United States.
• 1961Aboard NASA's Mercury-Redstone 2, the chimpanzee Ham became the first hominid to be launched into outer space.
• 1966The Soviet Union launches the unmanned Luna 9 spacecraft as part of the Luna program.
• 1971Apollo program: Apollo 14: Astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell, aboard a Saturn V, lift off for a mission to the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon.
• 1988Doug Williams became the first African-American quarterback to play in the Super Bowl, leading the Washington Redskins to victory in Super Bowl XXII.
• 1997Final Fantasy VII, the first video game in the Final Fantasy franchise to use 3-D computer graphics, was released.

Also observed on January 31

• Amartithi (Meherabad, India, followers of Meher Baba)
• Independence Day (Nauru), celebrates independence from Australia in 1968.
• Street Children's Day (Austria)