Dayhoff Westminster Soundtrack: July 31 On this day in history

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

July 31 On this day in history

• 904, Salonica -- the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of Macedonia -- falls to the Arabs, who destroy the city

• 1703, Daniel Defoe, the an English writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe, is placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet, but is pelted with flowers

• 1777, the Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old French nobleman, was made a major-general in the American Continental Army

• 1790, the first U.S. patent is issued to inventor Samuel Hopkins for a potash process

• 1792, director David Rittenhouse laid the cornerstone in Philadelphia for the U.S. Mint, the first building of the federal government

• 1865, the first narrow gauge mainline railway in the world opens at Grandchester, Australia

• 1919, German national assembly adopts the Weimar constitution (which comes into force on August 14)

• 1945, Pierre Laval, premier of the pro-Nazi Vichy government, surrendered to U.S. authorities in Austria; he was turned over to France, which later tried and executed him

• 1948, President Harry Truman helped dedicate New York International Airport (later John F. Kennedy International Airport) at Idlewild Field

• 1957, the Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations designed to detect Soviet bombers approaching North America, went into operation

• 1964, the American space probe Ranger VII transmitted pictures of the moon's surface

• 1972, Democratic vice-presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton withdrew from the ticket with George McGovern following disclosures Eagleton had once undergone psychiatric treatment

• 1974, Watergate figure John Ehrlichman was sentenced to 20 months in 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," documents about the war in Vietnam

• 1976, NASA releases the famous Face on Mars photo

• 1981, the 42-day strike of Major League Baseball ends

• 1987, Iranian pilgrims and riot police clashed in the Muslim holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, resulting in some 400 deaths, according to the Saudi government, which blamed the Iranians for the violence

• 1991, President George Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Moscow. ALSO: the U.S. Senate overturned a 43-year-old law and voted to allow women to fly military warplanes in combat

• 1997, in Brooklyn, N.Y., police seized five bombs believed bound for terrorist attacks on New York City subways by practitioners of that "religion of peace"

• 2002, a bomb exploded by practitioners of that "religion of peace" inside a cafeteria at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, kills nine people, including five Americans

• 2006, Fidel Castro hands over power temporarily to brother Raul Castro. This leads to a celebration in Little Havana (La Pequena Habana in Spanish), Miami, Florida, where many Cuban Americans participated

• 2011, ending a perilous stalemate, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders announced a historic agreement on emergency legislation to avert the nation's first-ever financial default. ALSO: Syrian security forces launched a ferocious assault on defiant cities and towns, killing at least 70 people and possibly many more

• 2012, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, visiting Cairo, said newly elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi "is his own man" and is committed to democracy

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