| 31 January 876 | Carolingian Empire, Italy [political events] | The Frankish emperor, Charles II the Bald, is accepted as king of Italy at Pavia, following the death of Louis II without legitimate issue. Charles promotes Boso, Count of Vienne, to duke and leaves him in charge of Italy when he returns to his West Frankish kingdom. |
| 31 January 1543 | Japan [births and deaths] | Tokugawa Ieyasu (original name Tokugawa Takechiyo), Japanese shogun (military ruler), founder of the Tokugawa (or Edo) shogunate, born in Okazaki, Japan (–1616). |
| 31 January 1580 | Portugal, Spain [political events] | Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal, dies, leaving the succession disputed between King Philip II of Spain (as grandson of Manuel I), the Duke of Braganza, and Dom Antonio, Prior of Crato. A propaganda war between Dom Antonio and Philip ensues. |
| 31 January 1797 | Austria [births and deaths] | Franz Schubert, Austrian composer, born in Vienna, Austria (–1828). |
| 31 January 1858 | England [transport] | English engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel's steamship Great Eastern is launched. With a displacement of 19,222 tonnes/18,918 tons, and 211 m/692 ft long, it is the largest ship in the world. It has two sets of engines that drive two screw propellers and two paddlewheels, and is the first steamship with a double iron hull. Its design serves as the prototype for modern ocean liners. |
| 31 January 1919 | [births and deaths] | Jackie Robinson, US baseball player, the first black player in the major leagues, born in Cairo, Georgia (–1972). |
| 31 January 1929 | USSR [political events] | Leon Trotsky, having lost the contest to succeed Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as Soviet leader to Joseph Stalin, is expelled from the USSR. |
| 31 January 1943 | USSR, Germany [World War II (1939–45)] | The German 6th Army, commanded by Friedrich von Paulus, surrenders at Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in the USSR, to the Soviet armies encircling it. Over 200,000 Germans are killed and captured in a major blow for the Third Reich. |
| 31 January 1956 | England [births and deaths] | A(lan) A(lexander) Milne, English author who created Winnie-the-Pooh, dies in Hartfield, Sussex, England (74). |
| 31 January 1974 | USA [births and deaths] | Samuel Goldwyn, US pioneer Hollywood film-maker and producer, one of the founders of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), dies in Los Angeles, California (91). |
| 31 January 1976 | world [statistics and demography] | The population of the world reaches 4 billion. |
| 31 January 1979 | Italy [law and government] | Giulio Andreotti's government resigns in Italy, ending the ‘historic compromise’ between Christian Democrats and communists. |
| 31 January 2001 | Netherlands Scotland [terrorism] | A Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands finds one of two Libyan suspects, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, guilty of murdering 270 people when a Pan-Am airliner blew up over Lockerbie in December 1988. His co-defendant is found not guilty. |
