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• Today is Friday, Jan. 31, the 31st day of 2014. There are 334 days left in the year. This is the Chinese New Year of the Horse.
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• Today's Highlight in History:
• On Jan. 31, 1944, during World War II, U.S. forces began a successful invasion of Kwajalein Atoll and other parts of the Japanese-held Marshall Islands.
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• On this date:
• In 1606, Guy Fawkes, convicted of treason for his part in the "Gunpowder Plot" against the English Parliament and King James I, was executed.
• In 1863, during the Civil War, the First South Carolina Volunteers, an all-black Union regiment composed of former slaves, was mustered into federal service at Beaufort, S.C.
• In 1865, Gen. Robert E. Lee was named general-in-chief of all the Confederate armies.
• In 1917, during World War I, Germany served notice it was beginning a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.
• In 1929, revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his family were expelled from the Soviet Union.
• In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Gold Reserve Act.
• In 1958, the United States entered the Space Age with its first successful launch of a satellite into orbit, Explorer I.
• In 1961, NASA launched Ham the Chimp aboard a Mercury-Redstone rocket from Cape Canaveral; Ham was recovered safely from the Atlantic Ocean following his 16½-minute suborbital flight.
• In 1971, astronauts Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa blasted off aboard Apollo 14 on a mission to the moon.
• In 1974, legendary movie producer Samuel Goldwyn, 94, died in Los Angeles.
• In 1980, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands announced she would abdicate on her birthday the following April, to be succeeded by her daughter, Princess Beatrix.

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