It happens just months after the Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the very first satellite into orbit.

2001 Libyan Intelligence officer is convicted of murder and gets life in prison for the bombing of the Pan Am Flight 103 in Lockerbie Scotland. That’s the verdict from a Scottish court convened in the Netherlands. The court acquitted a second Libyan in the 1988 bombing which killed 270 people.

1945Private Eddie Slovik becomes the first U.S. soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion. Slovik is shot by an American firing squad in France during the final month of World War II in Europe. 1923Norman Mailer, one of the great American authors in the years after World War II is born in Long Branch New Jersey.

And 1797Composer Franz Schubert is born in Vienna, Austria.

Today in history, Jan 31st, Mike Gracia, the Associated Press