July 31 - Events

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.
• 1009 – Pope Sergius IV becomes the 142nd pope, succeeding Pope John XVIII.
• 1200 – Attempted usurpation of John Komnenos the Fat.
• 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.
• 1492 – The Jews are expelled from Spain when the Alhambra Decree takes effect.
• 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): the 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 U.S. Second Continental 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 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.
• 1895 – The Basque Nationalist Party (Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea-Partido Nacionalista Vasco) is founded by Basque nationalist leader Sabino Arana.
• 1913 – The Balkan States signs an armistice at Bucharest.
• 1919 – German national assembly adopts the Weimar constitution, which comes 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 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 Antanti (Turkey, Romania, Yugoslavia).
• 1938 – Archaeologists discover engraved gold and silver plates from King Darius in Persepolis.
• 1940 – A doodlebug train in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio collides with a multi-car freight train heading in the opposite direction, 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, the 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.
• 1959 – The Basque separatist organisation ETA is founded.
• 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.
• 1972 – Operation Motorman: British troops move into the no-go areas of Belfast and Derry, Northern Ireland. End of Free Derry.
• 1972 – Three car bombs are detonated in Claudy, Northern Ireland, killing nine in what is believed to be a Provisional Irish Republican Army attack.
• 1973 – A Delta Air Lines jetliner crashes while landing in fog at Logan Airport, Boston, Massachusetts killing 89.
• 1976 – Viking program: Viking 1 – NASA releases the famous Face on Mars photo.
• 1981 – A 42 day-long strike of Major League Baseball ends.
• 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.
• 1991 – The United States and Soviet Union both sign the Start I Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the first to reduce (with verification) both countries' stockpiles.
• 1991 – The Medininkai Massacre in Lithuania. Soviet OMON attacks Lithuanian customs post in Medininkai, killing 7 officers and severely wounding one other.
• 1992 – A Thai Airways Airbus A300-310 crashes into a mountain north of Kathmandu, Nepal killing 113.
• 1992 – Georgia joins the United Nations.
• 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.
• 2002 – Hebrew University of Jerusalem is attacked when a bomb explodes in a cafeteria, killing 9.
• 2006 – Fidel Castro hands over power temporarily to brother Raúl Castro.
• 2007 – Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and the longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end.