July 31

July 31 is the 212th day of the year (213th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 153 days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS:

- 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.
- 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 - On his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to discover the 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 - The United States Congress passes a resolution that the services of Marquis de Lafayette "be accepted, and that, in consideration of his zeal, illustrious family and connexions, he have the rank and commission of major-general of the United States."
- 1790 - First U.S. patent is issued; granted to inventor Samuel Hopkins for a potash process.
- 1856 - Christchurch, New Zealand is chartered as a city.
- 1865 - The first narrow gauge mainline railway in the world opens at Grandchester, Australia.
- 1913 - The Balkan States signs an armistice at Bucharest.
- 1917 - The Third Battle of Ypres starts in Flanders.
- 1919 - German national assembly adopts the Weimar constitution (to come into force on August 14)
- 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 - Holocaust: 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."
- 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 - At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.
- 1951 - Japan Airlines is established.
- 1954 - First ascent of K2, by an Italian expedition led by Ardito Desio.
- 1956 - Jim Laker sets an extraordinary record at Old Trafford in the fourth Test of taking nineteen wickets in a first-class match (the previous best was seventeen).
- 1961 - At Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts, the first All-Star Game tie in major league baseball history occurs when the game is stopped in the 9th inning because of rain.
- 1964 - Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the moon, with images 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from earth-bound telescopes.
- 1970 - Black Tot Day: The last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy.
- 1971 - Apollo program: Apollo 15 astronauts become the first to ride in a lunar rover.
- 1972 - Northeast Airlines flies its last flight before being integrated into Delta Air Lines the next day.
- 1973 - A Delta Air Lines jetliner crashes while landing in fog at Logan Airport, Boston, Massachusetts killing 89.
- 1975 - In Detroit, Michigan, Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa is reported missing.
- 1976 - Viking program: Viking 1 - NASA releases the famous Face on Mars photo.
- 1981 - General Omar Torrijos of Panama dies in a plane crash.
- 1981 - 42-day strike of Major League Baseball ends in the United States.
- 1987 - A rare, class F-4 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.
- 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 - Discovery Program: 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.

*Wikipedia