Today in History.....January 31

On this day in …

* 1917, Germany served notice it was beginning a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare

* 1929, the Soviet Union expelled communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky. He was later assassinated in Mexico

* 1934, President Roosevelt devalued the dollar in relation to gold

* 1944, during World War II, U.S. forces began invading Kwajalein Atoll and other parts of the Japanese-held Marshall Islands

* 1945, Private Eddie Slovik became the only U.S. soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion as he was shot by an American firing squad in France

* 1950, President Truman announced he had ordered development of the hydrogen bomb

* 1958, the United States entered the Space Age with its first successful launch of a satellite into orbit, Explorer 1

* 1971, astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr., Edgar D. Mitchell and Stuart A. Roosa blasted off aboard Apollo 14 on a mission to the moon

* 2000, a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands convicted one Libyan, acquitted a second, in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. ALSO: The state of Georgia hoisted its new flag above its statehouse, one featuring a smaller Confederate battle emblem