TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JULY 31
30 BC Battle of Alexandria: Mark Antony achieves minor victory over Octavian, but most of his army subsequently deserts, leading to Octavian’s invasion of Egypt
904 Arabs capture Thessalonica.
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.
1790 The U.S. Patent Office opens.
1792 The cornerstone of the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, PA, was laid. It was the first building to be used only as a U.S. government building.
1882 Belle and Sam Starr are charged with horse stealing in the Indian territory.
1904 The Trans-Siberian railroad connecting the Ural mountains with Russia’s Pacific coast, is completed.
1931 An expedition has left to find if any Tasmanian Tigers (Tasmanian Marsupial Wolf) are left, it is believed they have retreated to rugged western and south western parts of Australia as a last stand for the species but many believe they are already extinct.
1961 Israel welcomes its one millionth immigrant
1962 A rally of supporters of Sir Oswald Mosley and his anti-Semitic Blackshirt group in London’s east end ends when missiles including rotten fruit, pennies and stones are thrown at him and police are forced to end the rally when he knocked to the ground by protesters.
1962 Federation of Malaysia formally proposed.
1971 Apollo 15 astronauts take a drive on the moon in their land rover.
1980 China’s population reached 1 billion.
1988 Bridge collapse at Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal in Butterworth, Malaysia, kills 32 and injures more than 1,600.
1989 A pro-Iranian group in Lebanon released a videotape reportedly showing the hanged body of American hostage William R. Higgins.
1990 Bosnia-Herzegovina declares independence from Yugoslavia.
1991 The US and the USSR sign a long-range nuclear weapons reduction pact.
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.
1999 The only person who was involved in the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton who is facing criminal charges Linda Tripp, has been charged for illegal phone tapping.
2001 Napster is finally closed down by court order following an injunction on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) .
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
