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

1945, Private 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 months of World War II in Europe.

1923 Norman Mailer, one of the great American authors in the years after World War II is born in Long Branch, New Jersey .

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

Today in History, January 31st, Mike Gracia the Associated Press.