On this day: January 31

January 31: Independence Day in Nauru (1968)

Sirius

• 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.

More anniversaries:

• January 30
• January 31
• February 1

• Archive
• By email
• List of historical anniversaries

• Current date: January 31, 2017 (UTC)
• Reload this page

from Wikipedia "On this day..." feed http://ift.tt/2kLTEaj