This Day In History Around The World

July 31, 2025 OLAOLUWA AYOMIDE

Here are some facts and figures of what went down on this day in History.

2007: The British Army’s longest continual operation, Operation Banner (1969-2007), ends as British troops withdraw from Northern Ireland.

2006: Fidel Castro temporarily hands over power to his brother Raul Castro.

1999: NASA purposely crashes its Discovery Program’s Lunar Prospector into the moon, ending the agency’s mission to detect frozen water on Earth’s moon.

1991: The US and the USSR sign a long-range nuclear weapons reduction pact.

1990: Bosnia-Herzegovina declares independence from Yugoslavia.

1988: Bridge collapse at Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal in Butterworth, Malaysia, kills 32 and injures more than 1,600.

1987: An F4 tornado in Edmonton, Alberta kills 27 and causes $330 million in damages; the day is remembered as “Black Friday.”

1971: Apollo 15 astronauts take a drive on the moon in their land rover.

1965: J.K. Rowling, author (Harry Potter series).

1962: Federation of Malaysia formally proposed.

1951: Evonne Goolagong, Australian tennis player.

1944: The Soviet army takes Kovno, the capital of Lithuania.

1932: Adolf Hitler ‘s Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis) doubles its strength in legislative elections.

1928: Horace Silver, jazz pianist, composer and bandleader.

1921: Whitney Young, Jr., civil rights leader and executive director of the National Urban League.

1919: Primo Levi, Italian writer and scientist (Survival in Auschwitz).

1917: The third Battle of Ypres commences as the British attack the German lines.

1912: Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist.

1904: The Trans-Siberian railroad connecting the Ural mountains with Russia’s Pacific coast, is completed.

1901: Jean Dubuffet, French sculptor and painter.

1891: Great Britain declares territories in Southern Africa up to the Congo to be within its sphere of influence.

1882: Belle and Sam Starr are charged with horse stealing in the Indian territory.

1875: Former president Andrew Johnson dies at the age of 66.

1867: S.S. Kresge, American businessman.

1837: William Clarke Quantrill, Confederate raider during the American Civil War.

1816: George Henry Thomas, Union general during the American Civil War.

1803: John Ericsson, naval engineer and inventor, developed the screw propeller.

1790: The U.S. Patent Office opens.

1760: Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, drives the French army back to the Rhine River.

1703: English novelist Daniel Defoe is made to stand in the pillory as punishment for offending the government and church with his satire The Shortest Way with Dissenters.