January 31st facts

While investigating facts about January 31st, I found out little known, but curios details like:

When the French Navy officially ceased using Morse Code on January 31st, 1997, the final message they transmitted was "Calling all. This is our last cry before our eternal silence."

On January 31st the U.S. will see the first supermoon, blue moon, and lunar eclipse sync up since 1866.

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 17 of the best facts about January 31st I managed to collect.

1. In Korea babies are considered 1 year old from birth and everyone ages on New Years Day. This means that in Korea a baby born on December 31st is already two years old by January 1st.

2. Guy Fawkes and the rest of the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot were tried in court on January 31st, 1606. They were hung, drawn and quartered for their attempted crime and the plot.

3. The Longplayer, a computer composed music piece that started on January 1st, 2000 and is designed to play until December 31st of 2999 where it will restart.

4. Since 2008 January 31st has been celebrated as "Love Your Wife Day" in Japan. Husbands take to the stage to loudly declare their love for their wives in public.

5. Laos once had two coups independently occur on the same day, January 31st 1965.

6. Jackie Robinson was born on January 31st, 1919 to Jerry and Mallie Robinson. He had four older siblings including Frank, Edgar, Matthew, and Willa Mae.

7. Jules Verne's first published novel was Five Weeks in a Balloon, a book he wrote about a travel adventure across Africa. It was published on January 31st, 1863 by the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, who had already published Victor Hugo, Balzac, and George Sand, acclaimed writers of the time.

8. A.A. Milne died on January 31st, 1956, at the age of 74. In 1952 he had suffered from a stroke, and brain surgery had left him an invalid up until the time of his death.

9. In 1918 Russia, the day after January 31st was February 14th, not February 1st - that's the day Russia transitioned from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar.

10. People in Bhutan turn 1 year old on January 1st, irrespective of their birth dates, due to administrative purposes. Also Bhutanese believe they are 1 year old by default when they are born. So a child born on 31st of december will automatically turn 2 year old the very next day.

What is true about january 31st?

You can easily fact check it by examining the linked well-known sources.

An "Olympiad" is not just the three-week period during which the games are played... it is the four-year period beginning January 1st of a year in which the Summer Olympics are due to occur (we are currently in the 31st Olympiad).

Warren Buffett has a long bet worth 500,000$ with Protege Partners, LLC that will be finalized in a little over a year (January 1, 2008 -December 31st, 2017) - source

The Cosmic Calendar, where an astronomer chronologically arranged the 13.8 billion years of the Universe’s age into a single year. In this calendar, the Big Bang took place on January 1st at 12:00 am, while the present moment is 12:59 pm on December 31st - source

United Airlines Flight UA890 took off from Shanghai, China on January 1st, 2017 and landed in San Francisco on December 31st, 2016 at 6:34 PM

If a Korean is born on December 31st, on January 1st he or she is already 2 years old. - source