Today is Thursday, Jan. 31, the 31st day of 2008. There are 335 days left in the year. On this date

Today is Thursday, Jan. 31, the 31st day of 2008. There are 335 days left in the year. On this date in 1958, the United States enters the Space Age with its first successful launch of a satellite into orbit, Explorer I.

In 1865, Gen. Robert E. Lee is named General-in-Chief of all the Confederate armies. In 1917, during World War I, Germany serves notice it is beginning a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt devalues the dollar in relation to gold. In 1944, during World War II, U.S. forces begin a successful invasion of Kwajalein Atoll and other parts of the Japanese-held Marshall Islands. In 1945, Private Eddie Slovik, 24, becomes the first U.S. soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion as he is shot by an American firing squad in France. In 1971, astronauts Alan Shepard Jr., Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa blast off aboard Apollo 14 on a mission to the moon. In 2000, an Alaska Airlines jet plummets into the Pacific Ocean, killing all 88 people aboard. In 2006, Coretta Scott King, the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., dies in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, at age 78.

January 31, 1983: The first of more than 300 people begin arriving at midnight to apply for 43 jobs at D.F.K. Fabrications Inc. on Bev Road.

Mary Mollica, a 17-year-old senior at Niles McKinley High school, is second runner-up in the Miss Teen-ager Pageant of Ohio at Columbus.

Randy Fellows, held in the Trumbull County Jail awaiting trial for aggravated murder in the death of Niles policeman John Utlak, tries to hang himself from a railing in his cell. Sheriff Richard Jakmas calls the attempt little more than a bid for attention.

January 31, 1968: Approximately 4,700 workers will return to their jobs at the General Motors Corp.‘s Fisher Body plant at Lordstown. They were among 128,000 workers idled because of a parts shortage due to strikes at three GM foundries.

Navy Hospitalman Keith Ray Bacorn, 21, a graduate of Champion High School, is reported killed in action near Camp Carroll, Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam.

Greenville Police Sgt. Dean Stuyvesant saves 12-year-old Douglas Zimmerman after the boy falls in the Shenango River while attempting to walk a gas line across the river. Stuyvesant tied a rope around his waist and went into the water after the boy who had become lodged in a clump of bushes downstream from the gas line.

January 31, 1958: The city will ask the FBI for aid in investigating the attempted bombing of the Youngstown Boat and Supply Co. Police found a pound and a half of TNT that did not detonate.

Mayor Frank X. Kryzan names George Krispli to head a 12-man morals squad that will replace the 16-man vice squad in the police department.

More than 100 veterans from posts all over Mahoning County will hit the streets, washing windshields for donations to the March of Dimes campaign to fight polio.

The New York Police Department will post patrolmen at 41 schools to cope with an upswing in violence among teen-agers.

January 31, 1933: The average cost of serving 37,104 domestic and retail customers in Youngstown in 1931 was $37.01, while the average revenue was $43.05, leaving the Ohio Edison Co. a return of $6.04 per customer on its distribution system, says C.S. MacCalla, Ohio Edison vice president.

The Youngstown Playhouse opens a three-day run of Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windemere’s Fan” at its Arlington Avenue theater. Miss Elizabeth Bonnell Wick appears in the drawing room scene in the second act.

The Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. offers a reward of $2,500 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons who set off a pipe bomb at the Crandall Ave. residence of general manager A.W. Smith.