Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/July 31

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.

← July 30	August 1 →

Staging area

Images

Use only ONE image at a time

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  Daniel Defoe
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  Lunar Rover-Manned land vehicle (NASA)
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  Lunar Prospector
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  Raúl Castro
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  Bush and Gorbachev sign the START I treaty.
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  Achille Compagnoni (left} and Lino Lacedelli
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  The Vigils of Charles VII, a manuscript of Martial d'Auvergne depicting the Battle of Cravant, dated to around 1484
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  K2
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  Mount Fuji
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  Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette

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.	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 from Alexios III Angelos, 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 (pictured) 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.
• 1924 – Herbert Payne's bill introducing compulsory voting in Australia was passed into law.
• 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".
• 1954 – A team of Italian climbers became the first to reach the summit of K2 (pictured), the world's second-highest mountain.
• 1971 – Apollo program: The first Lunar Roving Vehicle was used during the Apollo 15 mission to the Moon.
• 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.
• 2002 – Hamas detonated a bomb at the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, killing nine students and injuring about 100 more.
• 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: | William Courtenay |d|1396|Roger Wilbraham |d|1616| Jean-Gaspard Deburau |b|1796| Friedrich Wöhler |b|1800| William S. Clark |b|1826| Charles Inglis |b|1875| Fred Keenor |b|1894| Doris Zinkeisen |b|1898| Gubby Allen |b|1902| Bill Brown |b|1912 |Hilary Putnam |b|1926| 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

July 31: Lā Hae Hawaiʻi (Flag Day) and Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea (Sovereignty Restoration Day) in Hawaii (1843)

Free Derry Corner

• 1966 – The pleasure cruiser MV Darlwyne disappeared off the coast of Cornwall with the loss of all 31 people aboard.
• 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.
• 2000 – Three years after being hit by a mudslide, the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery in Hong Kong fully reopened.
• 2006 – Following intestinal surgery, Fidel Castro provisionally transferred the duties of the Cuban presidency to his brother Raúl.
• 2014 – Gas explosions in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, killed 32 people and injured 321 others.

• Feng Xingxi (d. 910)
• Marion Talbot (b. 1858)
• José Santamaría (b. 1929)
• Nabarun Bhattacharya (d. 2014)

More anniversaries:

• July 30
• July 31
• August 1