This is a list of selected July 31 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
Staging area
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
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Daniel Defoe -
Lunar Rover-Manned land vehicle (NASA) -
Lunar Prospector -
Raúl Castro -
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Achille Compagnoni (left} and Lino Lacedelli -
The Vigils of Charles VII, a manuscript of Martial d'Auvergne depicting the Battle of Cravant, dated to around 1484 -
K2 -
Mount Fuji -
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette -
Free Derry Corner
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Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| Feast day of Saint Ignatius of Loyola (Catholicism and Anglicanism) | appears on March 12 |
| 781 – The first recorded eruption of Japan's Mount Fuji (pictured) took place. | Refimprove |
| 1423 – Hundred Years' War: The English and their Burgundian allies were victorious over the French at the Battle of Cravant near Auxerre, France. | Refimprove |
| 1658 – Having defeated his brothers in a war of succession, Aurangzeb was crowned the sixth Mughal Emperor. | lots of {{cn}} tags (19) |
| 1924 – Herbert Payne's bill introducing compulsory voting in Australia was passed into law. | 6x cn tags |
| 1930 – The Shadow, one of the most famous pulp heroes of the 20th century, debuted as the mysterious narrator of a radio program. | refimprove sections |
| 1991 – The Soviet Union and the United States signed the bilateral START I treaty, the largest and most complex arms control treaty in history, which eventually removed 80% of all strategic nuclear weapons then in existence. | refimprove section |
| 1999 – NASA's Lunar Prospector was deliberately crashed into the Shoemaker crater near the Moon's south pole in an unsuccessful attempt to detect the presence of water. | refimprove |
Eligible
- 1009 – Sergius IV became the 142nd pope, succeeding John XVIII.
- 1200 or 1201 – John Komnenos the Fat briefly seized the throne of the Byzantine Empire, but was captured and executed that night.
- 1667 – The Second Anglo-Dutch War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Breda.
- 1777 – The Second Continental Congress passed a resolution commissioning the Marquis de Lafayette as a major general in the American revolutionary forces.
- 1917 – First World War: The Battle of Passchendaele began near Ypres, Belgium, with the Allies aiming to force German troops to withdraw from the Channel Ports.
- 1941 – The Holocaust: Under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring authorised SS General Reinhard Heydrich to handle preparations for "the Final Solution of the Jewish question".
- 1966 – The pleasure cruiser MV Darlwyne disappeared off the coast of Cornwall with the loss of all 31 people aboard.
- 1971 – Apollo program: The Lunar Roving Vehicle was first used during the Apollo 15 mission to the Moon.
- 1972 – The Troubles: Hours after the British Army's Operation Motorman brought an end to the self-declared autonomous area of Free Derry (Free Derry Corner pictured) in Northern Ireland, three car bombs exploded in the village of Claudy.
- 1975 – The Troubles: In a botched paramilitary attack, three members of the popular Miami Showband and two Ulster Volunteer Force gunmen were killed in County Down, Northern Ireland.
- 1991 – Soviet Special Purpose Police Unit troops killed seven Lithuanian customs officials in Medininkai in the most serious attack of their campaign against Lithuanian border posts.
- 2000 – Three years after being hit by a mudslide, the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery in Hong Kong fully reopened.
- 2002 – Hamas detonated a bomb at the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, killing nine students and injuring about 100 more.
- 2006 – Following intestinal surgery, Fidel Castro provisionally transferred the duties of the Cuban presidency to his brother Raúl.
- 2007 – The Troubles: Operation Banner, the British Armed Forces' operation in Northern Ireland, ended after 38 years with a military stalemate and ceasefire.
- 2012 – The largest power outage in history occurred across 22 Indian states, affecting more than 620 million people, or about 9 percent of the world's population.
- Born/died: | Feng Xingxi|d|910| William Courtenay|d|1396|Roger Wilbraham|d|1616| Jean-Gaspard Deburau|b|1796| Friedrich Wöhler|b|1800| William S. Clark |b|1826| Marion Talbot|b|1858| Charles Inglis|b|1875| Fred Keenor|b|1894| Doris Zinkeisen|b|1898| Gubby Allen|b|1902| Bill Brown|b|1912| Hilary Putnam|b|1926| José Santamaría|b|1929| David Norris|b|1944| Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd|d|1948| Cho Ki-chon|d|1951| J. K. Rowling|b|1965| Isamu Kamikokuryo|b|1970| Lola Álvarez Bravo|d|1993| Nabarun Bhattacharya|d|2014|
July 31: Lā Hae Hawaiʻi (Flag Day) and Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea (Sovereignty Restoration Day) in Hawaii (1843)
The lunar surface as photographed by Ranger 7 approximately 17 minutes before impact
- 1874 – Patrick Francis Healy was inaugurated as president of Georgetown University, becoming the first African-American president of a predominantly white university in the United States.
- 1924 – A private senator's bill by Herbert Payne to introduce compulsory voting in Australia became law.
- 1954 – A team of Italian climbers became the first to reach the summit of K2, the world's second-highest mountain.
- 1964 – The space probe Ranger 7 captured thousands of close-up photographs of the Moon (example pictured) over its final minutes of flight and transmitted them to Earth before crashing on the lunar surface.
- 2014 – Gas explosions in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, killed 32 people and injured 321 others.
- Fred Keenor (b. 1894)
- David Norris (b. 1944)
- J. K. Rowling (b. 1965)