On This Day: January 31

If you guessed that they were all musicians, you are correct. Franz Schubert was an Austrian composer, Philip Glass is an American composer, and Justin Timberlake is an American musician. We’re entering the final stretch of the first month of the last year of the first decade of the new millennium. Here’s your facts for the day:

1747: The first venereal disease clinic in the world opens at London Lock Hospital.
1846: The towns of Juneautown and Kilbourntown unite to form the City of Milwaukee. The towns were at war with each other in 1845 over the construction of a bridge over the Milwaukee River before declaring, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” (I don’t know that anyone actually said this, but you’ve got to imagine someone might have).
1865: Confederate General Robert E. Lee becomes general-in-chief of the confederate forces.
1876: The United States orders all Native Americans to move to reservations.
1917: Germany announces that its u-boats would resume unrestricted submarine warfare, hastening the American entry into World War I.
1929: Leon Trotsky is exiled from the Soviet Union.
1930: 3M begins marketing scotch tape.
1945: Private Eddie Slovik is executed for desertion during World War II. Although desertion remains a capital offense during times of war, Pvt. Slovik is the only soldier to be executed for it since the Civil War.
1958: The first American satellite, Explorer-1, successfully launches into orbit.
1961: Ham the Chimp becomes the first hominid (great ape) in space.
1990: The first McDonald’s in the Soviet Union opens in Moscow.

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