Events on July 31 49
Year 781
The oldest recorded eruption of Mount Fuji (Traditional Japanese date: July 6, 781).
Year 1201
Attempted usurpation by John Komnenos the Fat for the throne of Alexios III Angelos.
Year 1423
Hundred Years' War: Battle of Cravant: The French army is defeated by the English at Cravant on the banks of the river Yonne.
Year 1498
On his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to discover the island of Trinidad.
Year 1618
Maurice, Prince of Orange disbands the waardgelders militia in Utrecht, a pivotal event in the Remonstrant/Counter-Remonstrant tensions.
Year 1655
Russo-Polish War (1654-67): The Russian army enters the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Vilnius, which it holds for six years.
Year 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.
Year 1712
Action of 31 July 1712 (Great Northern War): Danish and Swedish ships clash in the Baltic Sea; the result is inconclusive.
Year 1715
Seven days after a Spanish treasure fleet of 12 ships left Havana, Cuba for Spain, 11 of them sink in a storm off the coast of Florida. A few centuries later, treasure is salvaged from these wrecks.
Year 1763
Odawa Chief Pontiac's forces defeat British troops at the Battle of Bloody Run during Pontiac's War.
Year 1777
The U.S. Second Continental Congress passes a resolution that the services of Gilbert du Motier "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."
Year 1790
The first U.S. patent is issued, to inventor Samuel Hopkins for a potash process.
Year 1865
The first narrow-gauge mainline railway in the world opens at Grandchester, Queensland, Australia.
Year 1874
Dr. Patrick Francis Healy became the first African-American inaugurated as president of a predominantly white university, Georgetown University.
Year 1904
Russo-Japanese War: Battle of Hsimucheng: Units of the Imperial Japanese Army defeat units of the Imperial Russian Army in a strategic confrontation.
Year 1917
World War I: The Battle of Passchendaele begins near Ypres in West Flanders, Belgium.
Year 1919
German national assembly adopts the Weimar Constitution, which comes into force on August 14.
Year 1938
Bulgaria signs a non-aggression pact with Greece and other states of Balkan Antanti (Turkey, Romania, Yugoslavia).
Year 1938
Archaeologists discover engraved gold and silver plates from King Darius the Great in Persepolis.
Year 1941
The 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."
Year 1945
Pierre Laval, the fugitive former leader of Vichy France, surrenders to Allied soldiers in Austria.
Year 1948
At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.
Year 1948
USS Nevada is sunk by an aerial torpedo after surviving hits from two atomic bombs (as part of post-war tests) and being used for target practice by three other ships.
Year 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.
Year 1970
Black Tot Day: The last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy.
Year 1972
The Troubles: In Operation Motorman, the British Army re-takes the urban no-go areas of Northern Ireland. It is the biggest British military operation since the Suez Crisis of 1956, and the biggest in Ireland since the Irish War of Independence. Later that day, nine civilians are killed by car bombs in the village of Claudy.
Year 1973
A Delta Air Lines jetliner, flight DL 723 crashes while landing in fog at Logan International Airport, Boston, Massachusetts killing 89.
Year 1975
The Troubles: three members of a popular cabaret band and two gunmen are killed during a botched paramilitary attack in Northern Ireland.
Year 1988
Thirty-two people are killed and 1,674 injured when a bridge at the Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal collapses in Butterworth, Penang, Malaysia.
Year 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.
Year 1992
Thai Airways International Flight 311 crashes into a mountain north of Kathmandu, Nepal killing all 113 people on board.
Year 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.
Year 2007
Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and the longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end.
Year 2012
Michael Phelps breaks the record set in 1964 by Larisa Latynina for the most medals won at the Olympics.
Year 2014
Gas explosions in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung kill at least 20 people and injure more than 270.
Year ?
Battle of Alexandria: Mark Antony achieves a minor victory over Octavian's forces, but most of his army subsequently deserts, leading to his suicide.