31st
July, on this day
30 BC - Battle
of Alexandria: Mark
Antony achieves a minor victory over Octavian's forces, but most
of his army subsequently deserts, leading to his suicide
432 St Sixtus
III begins his reign as Catholic Pope
768 [Philip] begins and ends his reign as Catholic Pope
781 The oldest recorded eruption of Mt.
Fuji (Traditional
Japanese date: July 6, 781).
904 Thessalonica
falls to the Arabs, who destroy the city.
1423 Hundred
Years' War: Battle
of Cravant - The French army is defeated at Cravant on the banks
of the river Yonne.
1451 Jacques
Cœur is arrested by order of Charles
VII of France.
1498 Christopher
Columbus discovers island of Trinidad
1588 The Spanish
Armada is spotted off the coast of England.
1655 Russo-Polish
War (1654-1667): Russian army enters the capital of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania, Vilnius, which it holds for six years.
1658 Aurangzeb
is proclaimed Moghul emperor of India.
1667 Second
Anglo-Dutch War: Treaty
of Breda ends the conflict.
1703 Daniel
Defoe is placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel
after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet, but is pelted with
flowers.
1741 Charles
Albert of Bavaria invades Upper Austria and Bohemia.
1777 Marquis
de Lafayette, 19, made major-general of Continental Army
1790 1st US patent granted, to Samuel
Hopkins for a potash process
1809 1st practical US railroad track (wooden, for horse-drawn cars),
Phila
1813 British invade Plattsburgh, NY
1865 The first narrow gauge mainline railway in the world opens at
Grandchester, Australia.
1908 Official founding of the Boy Scout Movement by Robert
Baden-Powell
1910 Dr
Crippen, wanted for the murder of his wife, is arrested aboard
the SS Montrose as it docks at Quebec, Canada at the end of its voyage
from Britain. The first criminal to be caught by the use of radio
1912 US government prohibits movies and photos of prize fights (censorship)
1913 The Balkan
States signs an armistice at Bucharest
1917 World War I: The Battle
of Passchendale
1919 German national assembly adopts the Weimar
constitution (to come into force on August 14)
1920 Formation of British
Communist Party
1922 18-year-old Ralph
Samuelson rides world's 1st water skis (Minn)
1925 Unemployment Insurance Act passed in England
1930 The radio mystery program The
Shadow is aired for the first time.
1932 The NSDAP
wins more than 38% of the vote in German elections.
1936 The International Olympic Committee announces that the 1940
Summer Olympics will to be held in Tokyo. However, the games are
given back to the IOC after the Second
Sino-Japanese War breaks out, and are eventually cancelled altogether
because of World War II.
1938 Bulgaria signs a non-aggression pact with Greece and other states
of Balkan Antanta (Turkey, Romania, Yugoslavia)
1938 Archaeologists discovered engraved plates of gold and silver
from King
Darius in Persepolis.
1940 A doodlebug
train in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio collides with a multi-car freight
train heading the opposite way, killing 43 people.
1941 Under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Nazi official Hermann Göring,
orders SS General Reinhard Heydrich to "submit to me as soon
as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial
measures necessary for carrying out the desired final
solution of the Jewish question."
1942 German SS gases 1,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia
1945 Pierre
Laval, fugitive former leader of Vichy France, surrenders to Allied
soldiers in Austria.
1945 John
K. Giles attempts to escape from Alcatraz prison.
1948 President Truman dedicates Idlewild Field (Kennedy
Airport), NY
1950 Opening of Britain's first self-service supermarket - Sainsbury's,
in Croydon, south London
1954 An Italian expedition, led by Ardito
Desio, is the first to successfully climb Mount
Godwin-Austin (K2) in the Himalayas
1956 English cricketer Jim
Laker takes all 10 Australian wickets in the second innings of
the Test Match at Old Trafford, Manchester
1960 Elijah
Muhammad, leader of Nation of Islam, calls for a black state
1962 Federation of Malaysia formed
1964 Al Parker glides 644 miles without any motor
1964 US Ranger
7 takes 4,316 pictures before crashing on Moon
1965 Cigarette adverts are banned on British television
1966 Alabamans burn Beatle products due to John Lennon's anti-Jesus
remark
1966 Charles
Whitman wounds 46 and kills 5 at University of Texas
1968 Beatles close
Apple Boutique, giving clothes away for free
1969 Mariner
6 flies past Mars
1969 National Guard mobilises in racial disturbances in Baton Rouge,
La
1970 Black Tot Day: The last day of the officially sanctioned rum
ration in the Royal Navy.
1971 American astronauts David
Scott and James
Irwin steer the first vehicle to be driven on surface of the moon
1973 Delta
Airlines Flight 723 DC-9 crashes in fog at Logan Airport, Boston
killing all but one of 89 aboard. Lone survivor dies 6 months later
1975 In Detroit, Michigan, Teamsters Union president Jimmy
Hoffa is reported missing.
1976 Viking
1 - NASA releases the famous Face
on Mars photo.
1978 Gunman shoots his way into the Iraqi Embassy in Paris
1980 John
Phillips of the Mamas and Papas is arrested on drug charges
1980 Soyuz 37 crew returns to Earth aboard Soyuz 36
1981 42-day strike of Major
League Baseball ends in the United States.
1982 46 children and 7 adults die as 2 buses and several cars collide
in France
1987 Rockwell International awarded contract to build a 5th shuttle
1987 A rare, class F4 tornado rips through Edmonton, Alberta, killing
27 people and causing $330 million in damage.
1988 32 people are killed and 1,674 injured when a bridge
at the Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal collapses in Butterworth,
Malaysia.
1988 Miami Dolphins beat SF 49ers 27-21 in London
1991 US President Gerald Ford and Russian President Mikail Gorbachev
sign the Strategic
Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in Moscow
1991 The Medininkai
Massacre in Lithuania. Soviet OMON
attacks Lithuanian customs post in Medininkai and kills 7 officers,
1 of severely wounded (after a head shot) becomes disabled.
1992 A Thai
Airways Airbus A300-310 crashes into mountain north of Kathmandu,
Nepal killing 113.
1999 Lunar
Prospector - NASA intentionally crashes the spacecraft into the
Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the moon's
surface.
2006 Fidel Castro
hands over power temporarily to brother Raúl Castro. This leads
to a celebration in Little Havana [La Pequeña Habana in Spanish],
Miami, Florida, where many Cuban Americans participated.
2007 Operation
Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland,
and longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end.
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31st
July 2006
Israel
'not yet ready for truce'
Baghdad
gunmen kidnap 25 people
Poll
protests block Mexico City
31st July
2007
First
Khmer Rouge leader charged
Canaries
fires force evacuations
Army
ending its operation in NI
31st July
2008
Karadzic
appears at Hague court
Pakistan
spy agency accused by US
Fresh
record for euro inflation
31st July
2009
Deadly
blasts hit Baghdad mosques
Eurozone
jobless at 10-year high
US
to reduce Afghan deaths
31st July 2010
Pakistan
floods 'kill 800' people
Russia
mobilises 240,000 to fight wildfires
Kashmir
civilians killed in clashes
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Birthdates which
occurred on 31st July :
1763 James Kent
Fredericksburgh NY, legal scholar (Columbia)
1803 John Ericsson US, invented screw propeller, built USS Monitor
1841 George Melville polar explorer, naval engineer
1894 Roy Bargy Mich, orch leader (Jimmy Durante Show)
19-- Gerald Anthony actor (One Life to Live)
19-- John Nevin Manchester Ct, rocker (Rythm Syndicate)
19-- Lise Cutter LA Calif, actress (Susan-Perfect Strangers)
1900 Elmo Roper pollster (Roper Poll)
1901 Jean Dubuffet France, painter (Landscape with 2 Personages)
1904 Arthur Daley sportswriter (NY Times-Pulitzer 1956)
1911 George Liberace Menasha Wisc, violinist (Liberace Show)
1912 Irv Kupcinet Chicago Ill, TV host (Tonight! America After Dark)
1912 Milton Friedman economist (Nobel 1976)
1919 Curt Gowdy Green River Wyo, sportscaster (ABC)
1919 Primo Levi Italy, chemist/writer (Survival in Aushchwitz)
1921 Whitney M Young Jr civil rights leader, head of Urban League
1923 Ahmet Ertegun CEO (Atlantic Records)
1929 Don Murray Calif, actor (Bus Stop, Advise & Consent, Endless
Love)
1935 Geoffrey Lewis Plainsfield NJ, actor (Earl-Flo, Gun Shy)
1939 France Nuyen Marselles France, actress (St Elsewhere, Diamond
Head)
1940 Stanley Jaffe producer (Fatal Attraction)
1943 Susan Flannery NYC, actress (Leslie Stewart-Dallas)
1943 William Bennett US Secretary of Education (1985-88)/drug czar
1944 Geraldine Chaplin Santa Monica Ca, actress (Dr Zhivago, 3 Musketeers)
1944 Sherry Lansing Chicago Ill, actress (China Syndrome, Black Rain)
1946 Bob Welch rocker (Fleetwood Mac-Oh Well)
1946 Gary Lewis Jerry's son, singer, (& The Playboys-This Diamond
Ring)
1950 Lane Davies actor (Mason-Santa Barbara, Impure Thoughts)
1951 Barry Van Dyke Atlanta Ga, actor (Lt Dillon-Battlestar Galactica)
1951 Evonne Goolagong Cawley Australia, tennis player (Wimbeldon 1971)
1953 Hugh McDowell chelloist (ELO-Telephone Line)
1957 Dirk Blocker LA Calif, actor (Baa Baa Black Sheep, Ryan's Four)
1957 Irina Nazariva USSR, 4 X 400m relay (Olympic-gold-1980)
1957 Victoria E Cooke Hollywood Ca, playmate (Aug, 1980)
1958 Wally Kurth actor (Days of Our Lives)
1962 Kym Malin Dallas Tx, playmate (May, 1982)
1962 Sandra "Sweetness" Hodge basketball player (Harlem
Globetrotters)
1963 Norman Cook rocker (Housemartins-Happy Hour, Over There)
1973 Jerry Rivera Puerto Rico, spanish singer
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Deaths which occurred
on July 31st:
1556 St Ignatius of Loyola founder of Society of Jesus, dies in Rome
1811 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla Mexican hero priest, executed by Spanish
1875 Andrew Johnson 17th pres, dies in Tennessee at 66
1953 Robert Taft (Sen-R-Oh) (Mr Republican), dies in NY at 63
1964 Jim Reeves Country singer.(He'll Have to Go, Four Walls) Plane
crash
1977 Stacy Moskowitz shot to death by Son of Sam, at 20
1978 Enoch Light orch leader (Gulf Road Show with Bob Smith), dies
at 70
1981 Gen Omar Torrijos leader of Panama, dies in plane crash
1984 Bill Raisch one armed actor (Fred Johnson-Fugitive), dies at
79
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