Today, February 1

1861 – Texas secedes from the United States.

1865 – President Abraham Lincoln signs the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution into effect.

1893 – Thomas Edison finishes construction of the first motion picture studio in West Orange, New Jersey.

1942 – The U.S. Navy conducts the Marshalls–Gilberts raids, the first offensive action by the United States against Japanese forces in the Pacific Theater.

1950 – The prototype of the MiG-17 makes its first flight

1968 – During the Tet offensive; In Saigon, National Police Chief Nguyễn Ngọc Loan summarily executes Viet Cong Captain Nguyễn Văn Lém  for murdering Lt Colonel Nguyễn Tuan along with his mother, his wife and 5 of their 6 children.

1974 – A fire in the 25-story Joelma Building in São Paulo, Brazil kills 189 people and injures another 293.

1979 – Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Tehran after nearly 15 years in exile.

1991 – A runway collision between US Air Flight 1493,  a Boeing 737, and SkyWest Flight 5569, a Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner, at Los Angeles International Airport results in the deaths of 35 people, and injuries to 30 others of the total 102 passengers and crews aboard.

2002 – Daniel Pearl, American journalist and South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal, kidnapped January 23, 2002, is beheaded and mutilated by his moslem captors.

2003 – Unknowingly damaged during launch, Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry of mission STS-107, killing all 7 astronauts aboard.

2004 – In a stampede at the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, 251 moslems are trampled to death and another 244 injured.