Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/July 31

Images
Use only ONE image at a time

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)


 * 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.