On This Day: January 31

This is the 31st day of the year.

Fact of the Day: social security

Ida May Fuller's first monthly retirement check, paid on this day in 1940 from the Social Security program, was for $22.54. Ms. Fuller had worked for three years under the program, which had been established in 1935. The accumulated taxes on her salary over those three years were $24.75. She lived to be 100 years old, collecting $22,888 in Social Security benefits. The nine-digits of the SSN are divided into three parts, each separated by a hyphen. The first three digits, the area numbers, reflect the state (or area of the state) of the applicant's mailing address on the original application form. The second two numbers are the group numbers, ranging from 01 to 99, which serve to break the SSNs with the same area numbers into more manageable blocks. The final four digits of the SSN, the serial numbers, run consecutively from 0001 to 9999 within each group designation.

Holidays

Feast day of Saints Cyrus and John of Alexandria, St. Francis Xavier Bianchi, St. Adamnan of Coldingham, St. Aidan or Maedoc of Ferns, St. Eusebius of St. Gall, St. Marcella of Rome, St. John Bosco, and St. Ulphia.

Nauru: Independence Day.

Events

1848 - Major John C. Fremont, popular for his mapmaking expeditions to the West, was court-martialed on grounds of mutiny and disobeying orders. Stephen Kearny brought charges against Fremont when a dispute arose over who held governing authority in California.

1865 - General Robert E. Lee was named general-in-chief of all the Confederate armies.

1865 - The U.S. House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.

1917 - Germany announced the renewal of unlimited submarine warfare in the Atlantic, and German torpedo-armed submarines prepare to attack any and all ships sighted in war-zone waters.

1940 - The first Social Security check was issued, to Ida May Fuller of Vermont.

1945 - Private Eddie Slovik became the only U.S. soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion.

1949 - The TV daytime soap opera, "These Are My Children," was broadcast on NBC; it was the first to be aired on a major American network.

1950 - President Harry Truman announced he had ordered development of the hydrogen bomb.

1958 - The United States entered the Space Age with its first successful launch of a satellite into orbit, Explorer I.

1971 - Apollo 14, piloted by astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr., Edgar D. Mitchell, and Stuart A. Roosa, was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a manned mission to the moon.

1990 - McDonald's Corporation opened its first fast-food restaurant in Moscow.

2001 - A court in the Netherlands convicted one Libyan and acquitted a second in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

2005 - The Michael Jackson child molestation trial begins in Santa Maria, California.

Births

1797 - Franz Schubert, Austrian composer.

1872 - Zane Grey, American western writer.

1882 - Anna Pavlova, Russian ballerina.

1915 - Thomas Merton, American Catholic monk/poet.

1919 - Jackie Robinson, first African-American baseball player in modern major leagues.

1923 - Norman Mailer, American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist.

1925 - Benjamin Hooks, American jurist, minister, civil rights leader, and public official.

1970 - Minnie Driver (born Amelia Driver), English actress, and singer-songwriter.

1981 - Justin Timberlake, American pop singer, and actor.

Deaths

1606 - Guy Fawkes, convicted for his part in the "Gunpowder Plot" against the English Parliament and King James the First, hanged, drawn, and quartered.

1956 - A. A. Milne (born Alan Alexander Milne), English writer.

1974 - Samuel Goldwyn, Polish-born American film producer and studio executive.

2000 - Gil Kane (born Eli Katz), Latvian-born comic book artist.

2001 - Gordon R. Dickson, Canadian science fiction author.