Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/January 31

Images
Use only ONE image at a time

Eligible

 * 1208 – King Sverker II of Sweden was defeated at the Battle of Lena by Eric Knutsson, who succeeded to the throne.
 * 1578 – Eighty Years' War: Spain won a crushing victory at the Battle of Gembloux, threatening the States General of the Netherlands and contributing to its move from Brussels to Antwerp.
 * 1747 – The London Lock Hospital, the first voluntary hospital specialising in the treatment of venereal diseases, opened.
 * 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.
 * 1957 – A DC-7B operated by Douglas Aircraft collided in mid-air with a U.S. Air Force F-89 and crashed into a schoolyard in Pacoima, California.
 * 1961 – Aboard NASA's Mercury-Redstone 2, Ham the Chimp became the first hominid launched into outer space.
 * 1988 – Doug Williams (pictured) became the first African-American quarterback to play in a Super Bowl, leading the Washington Redskins to victory in Super Bowl XXII.
 * 2000 – Alaska Airlines Flight 261, experiencing problems with its horizontal stabilizer system, crashed in the Pacific Ocean off Anacapa Island, California, killing all 88 people on board.
 * 2010 – James Cameron's Avatar became the first film to earn over US$2 billion worldwide.
 * 2013 – A gas leak underneath the Pemex Executive Tower in Mexico City caused an explosion that killed at least 37 people and injured another 121.
 * Born/died this day: | James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby |b|1607| Jost Bürgi |d|1632| Manuel Alberti |d|1811| Zina D. H. Young |b|1821| James G. Blaine |b|1830| Charles W. Lyons |b|1868| Cilibi Moise |d|1870| Eric Burhop |b|1911|  Justin Timberlake |b|1981| Eleanor Holm |d|2004|