Birthday Paper › What happened on …? › January 31

Events on January 31

• 1606 The last Catholic conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot against the Protestant King James I of England are executed. The main perpetrator, Guy Fawkes, is among them.
• 1850 The constitution introduced in Prussia provides for the three-class franchise, which gives the well-off voting advantages in elections to representatives.
• 1895 William Ramsay and John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, announce the discovery of a new chemical element, the noble gas argon, which they have isolated from the air. From 1898, Ramsay discovers three further elements in the isolated argon: the noble gases neon, krypton and xenon.
• 1933 In Mössingen, the only major strike against Adolf Hitler's “seizure of power” takes place.
• 1943 Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus capitulates with the German units encircled in the southern pocket at the Battle of Stalingrad in the German-Soviet War of World War II.
• 1950 In a radio address, Elly Heuss-Knapp announces the founding of the German Mothers' Recovery Association.
• 1958 The first US satellite, Explorer 1, is launched into Earth orbit 4 months after the Russian satellite Sputnik. In the process, under the direction of James Van Allen, it succeeds in detecting the Van Allen radiation belts around Earth.
• 1972 Rosa von Praunhein's film Not the Homosexual, but the Situation in Which He Lives is broadcast for the first time on German television by Westdeutscher Rundfunk.
• 1990 The first Soviet McDonald's restaurant opens in Moscow.
• 2002 The Larsen B ice shelf breaks away from Antarctica, a 3,250 km² ice shelf that had previously remained stable for more than 10,000 years.
• 2016 Germany becomes the European handball champion for the second time.
• 2020 Great Britain leaves the European Union (Brexit).

Born on January 31

• 1873 Melitta Bentz, German inventor and entrepreneur
• 1884 Theodor Heuss, German journalist, publicist, political scientist and politician
• 1901 Marie Luise Kaschnitz, German writer, first woman to win the Georg Büchner Prize
• 1931 Hansjörg Felmy, German theater and film actor
• 1950 Jan Hofer, German news anchor
• 1961 Torsten Michaelis, German actor
• 1970 Minnie Driver, British actress, singer and songwriter
• 1973 Portia de Rossi, Australian actress
• 1980 Ramona Kühne, German boxer
• 1990 Cro, German rapper, singer and music producer

Is your birthday on January 31?

Then there is a newspaper that tells only the story of your day: what was going on in the world on January 31 of your birth year, which song was at the top, what the weather was like at your birthplace, plus birthday twins and a personal greeting.

• For every birth year from 1946
• 4 to 10 pages, always €14.90, as a PDF to print
• With a greeting page for voice and video messages

Create the paper for January 31 · €14.90

Day and month are already filled in, you only choose the birth year.

Source of events and birthdays: German Wikipedia article „31. Januar“, licence CC BY-SA 4.0, selected, shortened and translated by Birthday Paper.

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