Historical Events on 31 Jul

Historical Events on 31 Jul

1423 - Hundred Years' War: Battle of Cravant - the French army is defeated at Cravant on the banks of the river Yonne.
1451 - Jacques CÅ"ur 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): 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 Stat
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.
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 - Archaeologists discover engraved gold and silver plates from King Darius in Persepolis.
1938 - Bulgaria signs a non-aggression pact with Greece and other states of Balkan Antanta (Turkey, Romania, Yugoslavia)
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 de
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.
1956 - Jim Laker sets an extraordinary record at Old Trafford in the fourth Test, 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 - 42-day strike of Major League Baseball ends in the United States.
1981 - General Omar Torrijos of Panama dies in a plane crash.
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, 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.
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.
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.