Today is the 31st day of 2017. There are 334 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1865: The House of Representatives passes a US constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.

OTHER EVENTS

1606: Guy Fawkes, convicted for his part in the “Gunpowder Plot” against the English Parliament and King James I, is executed.

1709: British sailor Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, is rescued after being marooned on a Pacific island for four years.

1928: Leon Trotsky is expelled from Soviet Union.

1943: German troops surrender at Stalingrad in World War II.

1945: Private Eddie Slovik becomes the only US soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion.

1949: The first US TV daytime soap opera, These Are My Children, is broadcast from the NBC station in Chicago.

1957: Trans-Iranian pipeline, from Abadan to Tehran, is completed.

1958: First US earth satellite, Explorer I, is launched at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

1962: Foreign ministers of Organization of American States vote to exclude Cuba from participating in the inter-american system.

1966: Soviets launch Luna 9, which makes the first successful soft landing on the moon.

1971: Astronauts Alan B Shepard Jr, Edgar D Mitchell and Stuart A Roosa blast off aboard Apollo 14 on a mission to the moon.

1990: McDonald’s restaurant opens in Moscow.

1992: US President George H W Bush asks the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Libya.

1995: The Mexican peso strengthens when US President Bill Clinton announces a multibillion-dollar credit package aimed at helping Mexico out of its financial crisis.

1996: In one of the worst attacks in Sri Lanka’s 12-year civil war, Tamil separatist rebels ram a truck packed with explosives into the central bank, killing 88 people and injuring more than 1,400.

1997: Mexican drug kingpin, Juan Garcia Abrego is sentenced to 11 concurrent life prison terms and fines that total nearly $500 million.

2000: Japan promises 6 million yen (US$57,000) to North Korea to help preserve ancient tombs near the Stalinist nation’s capital. North Korea hopes to have the tombs of Goguryeo, which contain 1,500-year-old murals, added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list.

2001: A Scottish court convened in the Netherlands convicts a Libyan intelligence officer of murder and sentences him to life imprisonment for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people. A second Libyan is acquitted.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Franz Schubert, German composer (1797-1828); Anna Pavlova, Russian ballerina (1885-1931); Norman Mailer, US writer (1923-2007); Suzanne Pleshette, US actress (1937-2008); Justin Timberlake, US singer (1981-)

— AP