31 JANUARY

1945 - Josefa Llanes Escoda, founder of the Girl Scout of the Philippines, is executed together with other Filipinos who have resisted Japanese Occupation during World War II.

1924 - The separatist Rhineland Government collapses weeks after the Bavarian government ordered the assassination of Franz Josef Heinz, the head of the autonomous Palatinate government.

1961 - "Ham," the chimp sent by the United States in an aborted mission to space, is recovered alive 676 km. from the Cape Canaveral launching site; the astronaut-chimp will later be sent to the National Zoo in Washington DC.

1968 - A Viet Cong squadron attacks and seizes the American Embassy in Saigon; the attack is part of the Tet offensive of simultaneous attacks that will later prove psychologically critical to the guerrilla cause.