| After drifting eight days in the Doldrums, winds returned on the 22nd, and Columbus set course west. By the morning of July 31 water was running short, so the Admiral decided to steer directly for Dominica, the island he had discovered on his second voyage. After changing course to north by east, he sighted an island at noon that day. Because the island had three hills, Columbus named it Trinidad, after the Holy Trinity. |
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| The 'invincible' Armada, sent in May by the Catholic Philip II of Spain to transport troops for an invasion of England, is broken up by English fireships while anchored at Calais. Although unable to defeat the Spanish in open sea, the English succeed in disorganising the fleet, which is forced to sail up the North Sea and around Scotland in order to return home. The invasion was defeated. |  |
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| The great treasure fleet of 1715 sailed from Havana on July 24. On the morning of July 30, winds had begun to pick up and by midday had increased to well over 20 knots. Around 4 a.m. on July 31, the hurricane struck the doomed ships with all its might, driving one ship after another on the deadly jagged reefs. The entire fleet was lost, and of the some twenty five hundred persons aboard various ships, over one thousand perished. Heavily-armed fleets such as this plied the waters between Spain and the Americas transporting massive amounts of silver, gold, gemstones, tobacco, exotic spices, and indigo. |
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| La Fayette was nineteen and a captain of dragoons in the French army when he expressed a desire to travel to America and fight against the British. Through Silas Deane, American agent in Paris, an arrangement was concluded whereby he was to enter the American service as major-general. This demand of a commission of the highest rank after the commander-in-chief did not merit much support from congress which felt it would be an injustice if they overlooked deserving Americans. La Fayette appreciated the situation, but still expressed his desire to serve in the American army upon two conditions -- that he should receive no pay, and that he should act as a volunteer. These terms were so different from those made by other foreigners, that on the 31st of July 1777 declared, "that his services be accepted, and that, in consideration of his zeal, illustrious family and connections, he have the rank and commission of major-general of the United States." |
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| In 1790, the first U.S. patent was granted to Samuel Hopkins of Vermont for a process for making potash and pearl ashes. The patent was granted for a term of 14 years and signed by President George Washington, who had the previous month signed the first U.S. patent statute into law on April 10, 1790. Hopkins did not get Patent with a serial No.1 as thousands of patents were issued before the Patent Office began to number them. |
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| Construction started with the laying of the cornerstone in the first building to be used solely as a U.S. Government building. It was the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. The Mint Act of 1792 also authorized construction of a mint building in Philadelphia, the nation's capital. This was the first federal building erected under the United States Constitution. Mint director David Rittenhouse laid the building's cornerstone on July 31st, amidst much excitement. |
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| Thomas Leiper's horse-drawn wooden tramway connected quarries in Delaware County, PA, to a boat landing. It was the first time rails were utilized for freight transportation. |
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| On July 29, 1813 a considerable military force set out up the Richelieu River from the British base at Isle aux Noix. Consisting of the recently captured and refitted sloops Broke and Shannon, three gunboats and some forty-seven bateaux, this large force was a reflection of the British Navy’s newly acquired superiority on the lake. Aboard were over 1,400 British regulars and marines. Their commander was Lt. Colonel John Murray, temporarily released from his duties as Commandant of the garrison at St. Johns for this incursion into United States territory. On Saturday, July 31, destruction began in earnest. Entering the Village of Plattsburgh, legitimate military facilities were sacked and burned. Among them were the arsenal, armory, a blockhouse and even the hospital. En route to the military cantonment upriver, however, three private warehouses were sacked and burned to the ground and several private dwellings were looted. Other troops plundered homes on Cumberland Head. The losses to private property were considerable. Before leaving the village a 13-ton sloop, The Burlington Packet, was taken as a prize. |
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| Filmed on location in Tahiti, White Shadows in the South Seas was originally intended as a project for famed documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty, whose Nanook of the North had cleaned up at the boxoffice. Gorgeously photographed, White Shadows in the South Seas is a masterful blend of drama and documentary. Most surviving prints do not include the clumsily constructed talkie sequences, wherein Monte Blue teaches Raquel Torres how to whistle. |
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| Cleveland plays its first game in new Municipal Stadium before a crowd in excess of 80,000 (paid attendance of 76,979), but Mel Harder loses to the A's Lefty Grove 1-0 on Cochrane's RBI single. |  |
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| Broadcasting the show from WBBM/Chicago, CBS launched Jack Armstrong on July 31, 1933. The show centered on Hudson High School student Jack Armstrong and his friends Billy and Betty Fairfield. From 1933 to 1950, the trio joined Billy and Betty’s Uncle Jim for a series of globe-trotting adventures. During the 1950-51 season, Jack became a government agent and the show was renamed Armstrong of the SBI. Sponsored for many years by Wheaties, Jack Armstrong transformed the “Breakfast of Champions” into a major marketing phenomenon. |
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| The President spoke at 2:30 p.m. from a stand in the center of the airfield. In his opening words he referred to Grover A. Whalen, Chairman of the Mayor's Committee for Greater New York City's Golden Anniversary, Thomas E. Dewey, Governor of New York, William O'Dwyer, Mayor of New York City, and Howard S. Cullman, Chairman of the Port of New York Authority. The address was carried on a nationwide radio broadcast. |
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| Using a borrowed bat, Dodger killer Joe Adcock hits 4 HRs and a double for 18 total bases in the Braves' 15-7 victory at Ebbets Field. The 18 total bases is a major-league mark and, combined with the seven total bases from the day before, gives him a 2-day tally of 25. The 2-game total ties him with Ty Cobb. |  |
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| Founded by Navy shipmates Al Alberts and Dave Mahoney, the act added Lou Silvestri and Sol Vaccaro before making a name for themselves around their native Philadelphia. After failing to find a distributor for their debut single "(It's No) Sin," Alberts founded his own Victoria label to release the single. It became a big hit in late 1951 and sold a million copies. Signed to Decca before the end of the year, their debut single for the label, "Tell Me Why," just barely missed the top of the charts and sold a million copies as well. A few Top Ten hits followed during the early '50s before the theme to “Three Coins in the Fountain” hit number one in 1954. Another movie theme, "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing," spent over a month at the top during 1955. |
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| After completing the Lake Ontario swim, Marilyn Bell took on other challenges. On July 31, 1955 she swam the English Channel. At 17 years of age, she was the youngest swimmer to succeed in this endeavour. On August 23, 1956, in her second attempt, she swam across the Juan de Fuca Strait. That same year she stopped participating in marathon swimming. |  |
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| The Sisu was the most successful American competition sailplane produced. It set three world records for Al Parker out of Odessa, Texas : 784 km/ 487 miles, 1963; free distance 1,041.5 km. /647.17 miles, 1964; and goal, 930.6 km. / 578.27 miles, 1969. |
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| In 1964, the American space probe Ranger 7 transmitted the first close-up images of the moon's surface ever taken by a U.S. spacecraft, beginning the mapping of the surface in preparation for a future lunar landing. Ranger spacecraft were designed to fly straight down towards the Moon and send images back until the moment of impact. Seventeen minutes before impact it captured the first image, showing 360-km from top to bottom, including the large crater Alphonsus (108-km diameter). A total of 4308 photographs of excellent quality were returned before Ranger 7 crashed in Mare Cognitum (Sea of Clouds), a mare terrain modified by crater rays. |
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| While in Clearwater, Florida on The Stones third US tour in 1965, Keith Richards woke up in his hotel room with the guitar riff and lyric "Can't get no satisfaction" in his head. He recorded it on a portable tape deck, went back to sleep, and brought it to the studio that week. |  |
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| The Huntley-Brinkley Report (sometimes known as the Texaco Huntley-Brinkley Report, because of one of its early sponsors) was NBC's flagship television news program from October 29, 1956 until July 31, 1970. It was anchored by Chet Huntley in New York City, and David Brinkley in Washington, DC. The newscast stayed atop the ratings until Huntley's retirement in 1970, although it started to slip as CBS's Walter Cronkite gained fame for his coverage of the space program, a field neither Huntley nor Brinkley had much interest in. |
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| "(They Long to Be) Close to You" was written by the songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. It was originally released as the B-side of "Blue Guitar" by Richard Chamberlain in 1963. This was the first of a string of hits for The Carpenters. They dominated Easy Listening radio in the early '70s. |  |
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| Taylor worked on a new album, returning to record stores in April 1971 with Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon. As he toured the U.S., the LP spent the summer in the Top Ten, eventually peaking just below the top of the charts, paced by its first single, "You've Got a Friend," written by Carole King, which hit number one in July and went gold. A second single, "Long Ago and Far Away," reached the Top 40, and the album eventually sold more than two million copies. On March 14, 1972, Taylor won the 1971 Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, for "You've Got a Friend." |
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| Using "Rover-1" to transport themselves and their equipment along portions of Hadley Rille and the Apennine Mountains, Scott and Irwin performed a selenological inspection and survey of the area and collected 180 pounds (82 kg) of lunar surface materials. They deployed an ALSEP package which involved the emplacement and activation of surface experiments, and their lunar surface activities were televised using a TV camera which was operated remotely by ground controllers stationed in the mission control center located at Houston, Texas. |
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| Thomas Eagleton, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, withdrew from the ticket with presidential candidate George McGovern following disclosure that Eagleton had once undergone psychiatric treatment for depression. |  |
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| Dick Allen becomes the first player since 1950 (Hank Thompson) to hit two inside-the-park homers in a game. Minnesota's Bert Blyleven is on the mound in the first and the 5th when Allen connects past Danny Darwin in CF. Chicago wins, 81 behind Stan Bahnsen, with Allen driving in five with his homers. |  |
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| Erving still remains one of only three players in pro basketball history to score more than 30,000 career points. Erving popularized being "airborne" and played the game "above the rim." He exhibited the style and grace both on and off the court that led many in basketball circles to call him an American treasure. Erving's statistical package spanned five years in the ABA and 11 in the NBA. He joined the Virginia Squires in 1971 and the New York Nets in 1973. He was the ABA's MVP in 1974 and 1976 and co-MVP in 1975. He was an ABA First Team All-Star in 1973, 1974, 1975 and 1976 and led the ABA in scoring in 1973, 1974 and 1976. In 1974 and 1976, Erving led the Nets to the ABA championship. In five ABA seasons, Erving averaged 28.7 ppg and 12.1 rpg. |
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| One of the President Nixon’s main men, John Erlichman was sentenced to prison for his role in the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. Ellsberg was the Pentagon consultant who leaked the "Pentagon Papers" (which purportedly told Americans how and why the U.S. really got into the Vietnam War). Ehrlichman also created the White House unit that was called the ‘plumbers’ because it was intended to plug leaks. |
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| With the addition of Gerald Alston's smooth lead vocals, solid songwriting talent within the group and the always wonderful work of Philly producer/arrranger Bobby Martin, the Manhattans began to score on the R&B charts, putting out a string of fairly traditional ballads that became Soul hits. Then in 1976, the quintet released Lovett's composition "Kiss and Say Goodbye," the song that would become their signature tune. |
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| From July 24-31, 1980 Viktor Gorbatko and Pham Tuan of Vietnam visited the station, arriving in Soyuz 37, and returned to Earth in Soyuz 36. Tuan’s experiments involved observing Vietnam from space, life sciences (including tests of growth of Vietnamese azolla water ferns, with application to future closed-loop life support systems), and materials processing. After the crew had departed, on August 1, Soyuz 37 was repositioned by rotating Salyut 6, freeing the aft port for Soyuz 38. |
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| On July 31, 1981, a compromise was reached. In the settlement, teams that lost a "premium" free agent could be compensated by drawing from a pool of players left unprotected from all of the clubs rather than just the signing club. The settlement gave the owners a limited victory on the compensation issue. Reportedly, the negotiations were so bitter that when a settlement was finally reached, Major League Baseball Players Association representative Marvin Miller and the owners' negotiator, Ray Grebey, refused to pose with each other for the traditional "peace ceremony" photograph. |
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| Hubbard has been a trailblazer in the field of law as she was the first woman President of the National Bar Association, and the first woman President of the Cook County Bar Association. Her honors and awards are many and include: NBA Gertrude Rush Award; Who’s Who in Black America; J. Ernest Wilkins Award of the Cook County Bar Association; Par Excellence of Operation PUSH; Shirley Chisholm Award of the Chicago Midwest Section of the National Council of Negro Women; Ebony Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Black Americans and recognition in Jet Magazine’s 50th Anniversary Edition. |
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| "Eye of the Tiger" was the #1 song of 1982. This was the theme song to Rocky III, which was the biggest movie of 1982. Tony Scotti was the president of Survivor's record label, and he played Sylvester Stallone some tracks from the previous Survivor album, Premonition. Stallone thought the sound, writing style and street appeal could fit in his new movie, so he called called Jim Peterik and Frankie Sullivan, who were Survivor's primary songwriters, and left messages on their answering machines. |
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| Prince stars in this semi-autobiographical movie, which was clearly developed around him and his particular talents. The movie is tied in to the album of the same name, which spawned three chart-topping singles: the opening number "Let's Go Crazy", "Purple Rain", and "When Doves Cry." Much of the movie's cinematography, by Donald Thorin, is closer to that of 1980s music videos than conventional film. |  |
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| Nolan Ryan becomes the 20th 300 game winner in history, in a 113 Texas win over Milwaukee. Ryan is not around to finish, joining Steve Carlton and Early Wynn as the only pitchers not to hurl a complete game for their 300th win. |  |
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| After almost 10 years of difficult negotiations, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) on 31 July 1991. The breakup of the Soviet Union delayed START's entry into force nearly three-and-a-half years until Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, which had inherited strategic nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union, ratified START and joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear states. |
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| On July 31, 2001, the U.S. House of Representatives passed The Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001. The legislation proposes a complete ban on somatic cell nuclear transfer to create cloned human embryos; it threatens transgressors with criminal punishment and civil fines. House Bill 2505 is the first human cloning prohibition to pass either chamber of Congress. |
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| In 2003, Felix Baumgartner became the first man to cross the English Channel by unpowered flight. He jumped from a plane about 30,000-ft above Dover, England and glided 22 miles across the Channel in a 10-minute flight wearing a specially-adapted suit with a wing-like carbon fibre fin attached to his back. In freezing air temperatures, the 34-year-old Austrian began the flight at a speed of about 220 miles per hour before slowing to around 135 miles an hour. Baumgartner made a parachute landing at Cap Blanc-Nez, near Calais, in France. He was equipped with cameras as well as highly-advanced data monitoring technology to ensure that he could be tracked during his journey. His new wing had a span of 1.8 metres - making it 10 centimetres bigger than his previous one with which he won a race against an aeroplane some weeks before in the U.S. |
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1498 During his third voyage to
the Western Hemisphere, Columbus arrived at the island of Trinidad
More ...
1588 Spanish Armada dispersed
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1715 Ten Spanish treasure galleons sunk off Florida
coast by hurricane
More ...
1777 The Marquis de Lafayette was made a major-general
in the American Continental Army
More ...
1790 The first U.S. patent was signed by George Washington
and Thomas Jefferson
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1792 Construction started with the laying of the
cornerstone in the first U.S. Government building
More ...
1809 First practical US railroad track
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1813 British invade Plattsburgh, NY
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1928 MGM’s Leo the lion roared, introducing
MGM’s first talking picture, "White Shadows on the South Seas"
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1932 Cleveland Municipal Stadium opens
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1933 Listeners turned up the radio to hear the
announcer introduce “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy!”
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1934 St Louis Cardinals defeat Cincinnati Reds
8-6 in 18 innings, pitchers Dizzy Dean & Tony Freitos go the distance
1948 President Harry S. Truman dedicates
New York International Airport
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1954 Milwaukee Braves' Joe Adcock sets record
of 18 total bases (4 hrs, 1 double)
More ...
1954 "Three Coins in the Fountain" by
the Four Aces topped the charts
More ...
1955 Marilyn Bell, age 17,
became the youngest person to swim the English Channel
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1964 Al Parker glides 644 miles without any motor
More ...
1964 US Ranger 7 takes 4,316 pictures before crashing
on Moon
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1965 "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" by
the Rolling Stones topped the charts
More ...
1970 Chet Huntley retires from NBC, ends "Huntley-Brinkley
Report"
More ...
1970 "(They Long to Be) Close to You"
by the Carpenters topped the charts
More ...
1971 You've Got a Friend" by James Taylor
topped the charts
More ...
1971 Dave Scott becomes first person to drive
a car on the Moon
More ...
1972 Thomas Eagleton withdraws from the George McGovern
presidential ticket
More ...
1972 Chicago White Sox Dick Allen hits 2 inside-the-park-homers
in Minnesota
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1973 ABA Virginia Squires trade Julius Erving
to the NY Nets
More ...
1974 One of the President Nixon’s men,
John Erlichman was sentenced to prison
More ...
1976 "Kiss and Say Goodbye" by the Manhattans
topped the charts
More ...
1980 Soyuz 37 crew returns to Earth aboard Soyuz
36
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1981 42 day old, 2nd major league baseball strike
ends
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1981 Arnette Hubbard installed as first woman
president of the National Bar Association
More ...
1982 "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor
topped the charts
More ...
1985"Purple Rain" premieres
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1990 Nolan Ryan becomes the 20th major league
pitcher to win 300 games
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1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed in
Moscow
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2001 The US House of Representatives voted 265-102
to criminalize all human cloning
More ...
2003 First unpowered flight across English
Channel
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