TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS MONDAY, JULY 31, 2017

On this day in history:

1498 - Christopher Columbus, on his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, arrived at the island of Trinidad. 1900 - Western Australia votes to join the Commonwealth of Australia.

1942 - The town of Mossman in far north Queensland is bombed by the Japanese. 1919 - Germany’s Weimar Constitution was adopted. 1928 - MGM’s Leo the lion roared for the first time. He introduced MGM’s first talking picture, White Shadows on the South Seas.

1932 - Enzo Ferrari retired from racing. In 1950 he launched a series of cars under his name. 1945 - Pierre Laval of France surrendered to Americans in Austria.

1955 - Marilyn Bell of Toronto, Canada, at age 17, became the youngest person to swim the English Channel.

1959 - The Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) was founded. The group is known for being an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organisation.

1964 - The American space probe Ranger 7 transmitted pictures of the moon’s surface. 1971 - Men rode in a vehicle on the moon for the first time in a lunar rover vehicle (LRV). 1982 - Yugoslavia imposed a six-month freeze on prices. 1989 - A pro-Iranian group in Lebanon released a videotape reportedly showing the hanged body of American hostage William R. Higgins.

1991 - US President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

1992 - Thai Airways International Flight 311 crashes into a mountain north of Kathmandu, Nepal killing all 113 people on board.

1999 - The spacecraft Lunar Prospect crashed into the moon. It was a mission to detect frozen water on the moon’s surface. The craft had been launched on January 6, 1998.

2012 - Michael Phelps breaks the record set in 1964 by Larisa Latynina for the most medals won at the Olympics.

2014 - Gas explosions in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung kill at least 20 people and injure more than 270.