Some of the significant events which took place on July 31 taken from the leaf of History:
1498 – Christopher Columbus, on his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, arrived at the island of Trinidad.
1658 – Aurangzeb appoints himself Mongol emperor.
1790 – The first U.S. patent was issued to Samuel Hopkins for his process for making potash and pearl ashes. The substance was used in fertilizer.
1792 – The cornerstone of the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, PA, was laid. It was the first building to be used only as a U.S. government building.
1880: Popular Hindi writer Munshi Premchand – one of India’s most popular Hindi writer Born as Dhanpat Rai in Lamahi, a small village near Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, Premchand lost his mother when he was very young. Premchand’s father was a village accountant. Following his mother’s death was raised by his grandmother who also passed away soon after. Stung by harsh behavior of his step mother, he began to write his frustrations, depressions and other feelings in loneliness never knew that one day he would become a great writer and novelist for centuries to be remembered.
1919 – Germany’s Weimar Constitution was adopted.
1920 – U.S.A. Illegal Booze Seized: A total of 2,000,000 quarts of Whisky have been seized in New York and Chicago this week in two raids on illegal drinking establishments.
1931 – Australia Tasmanian Tigers: An expedition has left to find if any Tasmanian Tigers (Tasmanian Marsupial Wolf) are left, it is believed they have retreated to rugged western and south western parts of Australia as a last stand for the species but many believe they are already extinct.
1940- Udham Singh, fiery revolutionary, freedom fighter and social reformer of India was hanged by the British Government in the Pantone Villa Jail, London.
1947- J.K. Rowling (Joanne Kathleen Rowling) was born on, July 31, 1947, Chipping Sodbury, England. The use of J.K. Rowling was the publisher’s decision to stop boys from being discouraged by the story’s author being female. It was released in 1997 and went straight to bestseller. All seven of the Harry Potter books have sold extremely well, and have been made into movies (with the last book being released as a film in the summer of 2010). Rowling had earned a B.A. in French from Exeter University in 1986, but was unemployed and divorced from her Portuguese husband when she wrote the first Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. She was working as a French teacher in Edinburgh at the time. Sales of the Philosopher’s Stone (which was renamed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in America) were astonishingly good, and it with the subsequent stories have created a worldwide phenomenon. She remarried in 2001 and has had two further children to the one from her first marriage.
1952: Bela Mitra, a commander of ‘Nari Vahini’ and activist of ‘Azad Hind Fauz’ formed to free India from British imperial power passed away.
1962 – UK Sir Oswald Mosley: A rally of supporters of Sir Oswald Mosley and his anti-Semitic Blackshirt group in London’s east end ends when missiles including rotten fruit, pennies and stones are thrown at him and police are forced to end the rally when he knocked to the ground by protesters.
1964 – USA Ranger 7: Ranger 7 an unmanned lunar probe is sent to the moon its main purpose is to discover what the moon’s surface would be like for the planned moon landing later in the decade, it’s cameras start filming the surface 17 minutes before impact and the photos are beamed back to earth. The pictures showed that the lunar surface was not excessively dusty or otherwise treacherous to a potential spacecraft landing.
1978 – Rhodesia Attacks Mozambique: Rhodesian troops, Jet fighters and Bombers attacked Guerrilla bases in Mozambique after crossing the border as they believe they are bases used by terrorists entering Rhodesia.
1982 – Iraq Iran Invasion: Iran is continuing to make progress on its push towards the capital of Iraq, Baghdad.
1987 – Peter Wright’s Spy-catcher book: The British Attorney General has filed charges against the Sunday Telegraph for publishing three articles repeating details from the Spy-catcher book which is banned from publication in the UK. Spy-catcher is banned in the UK because Peter Wright who worked for MI5 as a Senior Intelligence Officer is in breach of his contract and could damage confidence in British security.
1991 – Soviet Union Start Treaty signed: The world’s two superpowers the United States and the Soviet Union sign the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) an historic agreement reducing their stockpiles of nuclear warheads by more than 30%.
1999 – U.S.A. Linda Tripp: The only person who was involved in the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton who is facing criminal charges Linda Tripp, has been charged for illegal phone tapping.
1999 – Great Britain Beef Export Ban Lifted: The British Beef export ban that has now been in place for three years following the BSE Crisis and its link to its human form CJD. Since the ban in 1996 strict new hygiene and registration measures have been put in place to ensure British Beef is the best in the market, and British farmers are now seeking a great future for beef exports.
1999 – The spacecraft Lunar Prospect crashed into the moon. It was a mission to detect frozen water on the moon’s surface. The craft had been launched on January 6, 1998.
2001- Napster Closed Down: Napster is finally closed down by court order following an injunction on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Napster had grown in just two short years from just a few visitors and file swappers to multiple millions of visitors sharing music mostly in the form of MP3’s depriving the music industry of millions of dollars. And in 2002 Napster was forced to file for Chapter 11 protection but an American bankruptcy judge forced Napster to liquidate its assets according to Chapter 7 of the U.S. bankruptcy laws.
2002 – Uruguay Banking Crisis: Following a withdrawals hundreds of millions of dollars by locals and foreigners on the banks in Uruguay, the country’s financial system cracks under the strain with the state bank branches and the countries ATM machines closed while the government decides what it can do. The government has applied to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for loans to keep the financial system afloat. The US stepped in on 5th August with a temporary loan of $1.5 billion.
2006 – Somalia Commercial Flights Restart After 10 Years: The first commercial flight from Mogadishu in over ten years departed for the United Arab Emirates on this day. The advent of this flight demonstrated the steady control that Islamic courts and militia have over the capital. The flight took place during the same week that the official government’s cabinet resigned and the Prime Minister, Ali Mohamed Gedi faced a vote of no-confidence.
2007 – Northern Ireland Operation Banner Ends: England’s Operation Banner officially ends after 38 years. The operation was originally an emergency operation sent for peacekeeping in 1969 when Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland clashed. The operation was considered the longest uninterrupted campaign in the British army’s history.
2011 – Violent unrest erupts in Kashgar, a city in the Xinjiang region of China. The violence began after two men drove a truck into pedestrians and attacked them with knives. Six people were killed, along with the truck driver and one of the attackers. An explosion also killed three others, while police shot and killed four people they labeled as suspects. The region of Xinjiang has a population of mostly ethnic Uighur, who are Muslim, but there is much ethnic tension in the area as Han Chinese move into the region. The Chinese government blamed the Uighur activists for the violence, while the Uighurs blamed security forces.
2012 – Michael Phelps Wins 19th Olympic Medal: Michael Phelps won his record-breaking 19th Olympic medal after winning gold as a part of the 4 x 200 m freestyle relay team for the USA. Phelps beat Russian gymnast Larisa Latynina, who had won a total of 18 medals during the 1950s and 1960s, for the title of most decorated Olympian in the history of the modern games.
2013 – Scientists grow artificial ear: Scientists in the United States have announced that they were able to grow an artificial human ear in a lab from animal tissue. They say this development brings them one step closer to being able to grow an ear from a patient’s cells in order to help people who have deformed ears or lost them in an accident.
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