January 31: Independence Day in Nauru (1968)
- 1578 – Eighty Years' War: Spain won a crushing victory in the Battle of Gembloux, hastening the disintegration of the unity of the rebel provinces and bringing an end to the Union of Brussels.
- 1862 – American astronomer Alvan Graham Clark first observed the faint white dwarf companion of Sirius (pictured), the brightest star in the night sky.
- 1900 – Datu Muhammad Salleh, leader of a series of major disturbances in North Borneo, was shot dead in Tambunan, but his followers did not give up for five more years.
- 1945 – Second World War: The British 3rd Commando Brigade's victory in the Battle of Hill 170 was crucial in causing the 28th Japanese Army to withdraw from the Arakan peninsula of Burma.
- 2000 – Alaska Airlines Flight 261, experiencing problems with its horizontal stabilizer system, crashed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California's Anacapa Island, killing all 88 people on board.
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