July 31

July 31 is the 212th day (213th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 153 days remaining.

Table of contents

1 Events
2 Births
3 Deaths
4 Holidays and observances

Events

1423 - Hundred Years War: Battle of Cravant - The French army is defeated at Cravant on the banks of the river Yonne.
1498 - On his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to discover the island of Trinidad.
1667 - Second Anglo-Dutch War ends: The Treaty of Breda ends the war.
1703 - Daniel Defoe is placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet.
1790 - First US patent issued; granted to inventor Samuel Hopkins.
1856 - Christchurch, New Zealand chartered as a city.
1919 - German national assembly adopts Weimar constitution (to enter into force August 14)
1930 - The radio mystery program The Shadow airs for the first time.
1945 - Pierre Laval, fugitive former leader of Vichy France, surrenders to Allied soldiers in Austria.
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."
1948 - At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.
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 due to rain.
1964 - Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the moon (images are 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from earth-bound telescopes).
1971 - Apollo program: Apollo 15 astronauts become the first to ride in a lunar rover.
1973 - A Delta Airlines jetliner crashed while landing in fog at Logan Airport, Boston, Massachusetts killing 89
1975 - In Detroit, Michigan, Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa is reported missing.
1976 - NASA releases the famous Face on Mars photo, taken by Viking 1
1992 - A Thai Airways Airbus A300-310 crashes into mountain south of Kathmandu, Nepal killing 113
1996 - MIL-STD-1750A was declared inactive for use in new designs.
1999 - NASA intentionally crashes the Lunar Prospector spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the moon's surface.

Births

1396 - Philip III of Burgundy, duke of Burgundy (+ 1467)
1816 - George Henry Thomas, American general (+ 1870)
1901 - Jean Dubuffet, painter and sculptor (+ 1985)
1912 - Irv Kupcinet, newspaper columnist
1912 - Milton Friedman, recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in economics
1914 - Louis de Funès, actor and comedian (+ 1983)
1916 - Bill Todman, game show producer (+ 1979)
1919 - Curt Gowdy, sports announcer
1919 - Primo Levi, author, chemist (+ 1987)
1921 - Whitney Young, civil rights activist (+ 1971)
1923 - Ahmet Ertegun, record company executive
1928 - Kurt Sontheimer, political scientist
1930 - Oleg Popov, clown
1939 - France Nuyen, actress
1943 - William Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education and "drug czar"
1944 - Geraldine Chaplin, actress
1946 - Gary Lewis, rock and roll musician
1946 - Bob Welch, rock and roll musician
1951 - Evonne Goolagong, tennis star
1952 - Alan Autry, American football player, actor, mayor of Fresno, California
1958 - Bill Berry, rock and roll musician (of the band R.E.M. (band))
1959 - Stanley Jordan, jazz guitarist
1962 - Wesley Snipes, actor
1965 - J. K. Rowling, novelist
1966 - Dean Cain, actor

Deaths

1099 - Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar ("El Cid"), Spanish warrior
1108 - King Philip I of France
1556 - Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits
1886 - Franz Liszt, composer
1937 - Charles Martine, Apache scout
1944 - Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French pilot and writer
1953 - Robert Taft, Senator from Ohio, former candidate for President of the United States, son of William Howard Taft, "Mr. Republican"
1993 - Baudouin I of Belgium
2001 - Poul Anderson, science fiction author

Holidays and observances

Republic of the Congo - Upswing of the Revolution
Feast day of Saint Ignatius of Loyola

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