Today in History – July 31 in History
What happened on this day in history – July 31 in History around the world
904 | Arabs capture Thessalonica. | |
1703 | English novelist Daniel Defoe is made to stand in the pillory as punishment for offending the government and church with his satire The Shortest Way With Dissenters. | |
1760 | Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, drives the French army back to the Rhine River. | |
1790 | The U.S. Patent Office opens. | |
1882 | Belle and Sam Starr are charged with horse stealing in the Indian territory. | |
1875 | Former president Andrew Johnson dies at the age of 66. | |
1891 | Great Britain declares territories in Southern Africa up to the Congo to be within their sphere of influence. | |
1904 | The Trans-Siberian railroad connecting the Ural mountains with Russia’s Pacific coast, is completed. | |
1917 | The third Battle of Ypres commences as the British attack the German lines. | |
1932 | Adolf Hitler’s Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis) doubles its strength in legislative elections. | |
1944 | The Soviet army takes Kovno, the capital of Lithuania. | |
1962 | Federation of Malaysia formally proposed. | |
1971 | Apollo 15 astronauts take a drive on the moon in their land rover. | |
1987 | An F4 tornado in Edmonton, Alberta kills 27 and causes $330 million in damages; the day is remembered as “Black Friday.” | |
1988 | Bridge collapse at Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal in Butterworth, Malaysia, kills 32 and injures more than 1,600. | |
1990 | Bosnia-Hercegovina declares independence from Yugoslavia. | |
1991 | US and USSR sign a long-range nuclear weapons reduction pact. | |
1999 | NASA purposely crashes its Discovery Program’s Lunar Prospector into the moon, ending the agency’s mission to detect frozen water on Earth’s moon. | |
2006 | Fidel Castro temporarily hands over power to his brother Raul Castro. | |
2007 | The British Army’s longest continual operation, Operation Banner (1969-2007), ends as British troops withdraw from Northern Ireland. | |
Born on July 31 | ||
1803 | John Ericsson, naval engineer and inventor, developed the screw propeller. | |
1816 | George Henry Thomas, Union general during the American Civil War. | |
1837 | William Clarke Quantrill, Confederate raider during the American Civil War. | |
1867 | S.S. Kresge, American businessman. | |
1901 | Jean Dubuffet, French sculptor and painter. | |
1912 | Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist. | |
1919 | Primo Levi, Italian writer and scientist (Survival in Auschwitz). | |
1921 | Whitney Young, Jr., civil rights leader and executive director of the National Urban League. | |
1928 | Horace Silver, jazz pianist, composer and bandleader. | |
1951 | Evonne Goolagong, Australian tennis player. | |
1965 | J.K. Rowling, author (Harry Potter series). |