NOW & THEN
31 JULY
30 BC: Mark Antony achieved a minor victory over Octavian’s forces in the Battle of Alexandria, but most of his army subsequently deserted, leading to his suicide.
781: The oldest recorded eruption of Mount Fuji in Japan.
1498: Christopher Columbus discovered the island of Trinidad.
1635: British public inland postal services were established.
1718: The English fleet destroyed the Spanish in battle at Cape Passaro.
1786: The first edition of Burns’s poems was published by John Wilson, Kilmarnock, under the title Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect.
1849: Benjamin Chambers patented the breech loading cannon.
1865: The first narrow gauge mainline railway in the world opened at Grandchester, Australia.
1893: The Gaelic League was founded by Douglas Hyde and Eoin Macneill to encourage Irish people to speak the language and take a greater interest in their culture.
1917: Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) began.
1925: The British parliament passed ther Unemployment Insurance Act.
1928: Discus thrower Halina Konopacka of Poland became the first woman to win a track and field Olympic gold medal.
1929: The World Boy Scouts’ Jamboree at Arrowe Park, Birkenhead, was opened.
1942: Oxfam charity was founded at a meeting in the Oxford University Church of St Mary’s.
1942: Driving in Britain for anything other than essential business was outlawed by wartime government.
1953: The Department of Health, Education and Welfare was created.
1964: US Ranger 7 spacecraft transmitted to Earth first closeup pictures of the Moon.
1965: Cigarette advertising on television in Britain was banned.
1970: “Black Tot Day” was the last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy.
1971: US Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin took six-hour ride on Moon in Lunar Roving Vehicle.
1987: More than 400 people, including 275 Iranian pilgrims, died in clashes with security police in holy city of Mecca during climax of annual Haj.
1987: A class F4 tornado raged through Edmonton, Canada, killing 27 people and causing $330 million damage.
1991: Presidents George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev signed a long-range nuclear weapons reduction pact in Moscow.
1994: Sergei Bubka cleared 6.14m in the pole vault to set his 35th world record.
1999: Nasa intentionally crashed the Lunar Prospector spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the moon’s surface.
2006: Fidel Castro handed over power temporarily to brother Raúl Castro.
2007: Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and the longest-running British Army operation ever, came to an end.
Andrew Marr, political commentator and broadcaster, 61; Jonathan Dimbleby, broadcaster, author and historian, 76; Lynne Reid Banks, author, 91; Evonne Goolagong Cawley MBE, Wimbledon tennis champion, 69; Lord James Douglas-hamilton (Baron Selkirk of Douglas), MP 1974-97, 78; , 63; Norman Cook (Fatboy Slim), DJ, musician, record producer, 57; Victoria Azarenka, tennis player, 31; Emilia Fox, actress (Silent Witness), 46.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1886 Fred Quimby, producer of cartoon films (seven Academy Awards for Tom and Jerry); 1912 Professor Milton Friedman, economist and Nobel laureate; 1919 Norman Del Marr, conductor and musicologist; 1930 Oleg Popov, Russian circus clown;1947 Richard Griffiths OBE, actor.
Deaths: 1556 St Ignatius of Loyala, Spanish soldier and founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits); 1886 Franz Liszt, composer; 1875 Andrew Johnson, US president 1865-1869; 1992 Lord Cheshire, VC, founder of Cheshire Homes; 2009 Sir Bobby Robson CBE, football manager; 2012 Gore Vidal, US author and screenplay writer; 2012 Mollie Hunter, Longniddry-born writer.