Today is Wednesday, July 31, the 213th day of 2024. There are 153 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On July 31, 2012, at the Summer Olympics in London, swimmer Michael Phelps won his 19th Olympic medal, becoming the most decorated Olympian of all time. (He would finish his career with 28 total Olympic medals, 23 of them gold.)
Also on this date:
In 1715, a fleet of Spanish ships carrying gold, silver and jewelry sank during a hurricane off the east Florida coast; of some 2,500 crew members, more than 1,000 died.
In 1777, the 19-year-old Marquis de Lafayette received a commission as major general in the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress.
In 1919, Germany’s Weimar Constitution was adopted by the republic’s National Assembly.
In 1945, Pierre Laval, premier of the pro-Nazi Vichy government in France, surrendered to U.S. authorities in Austria; he was turned over to France, which later tried and executed him.
In 1957, the Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations designed to detect Soviet bombers approaching North America, went into operation.
In 1964, the U.S. lunar probe Ranger 7 took the first close-up images of the moon’s surface.
In 1971, Apollo 15 crew members David Scott and James Irwin became the first astronauts to use a lunar rover on the surface of the moon.
In 1972, vice-presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton withdrew from the Democratic ticket with George McGovern following disclosures that Eagleton had received electroshock therapy to treat clinical depression.
In 1991, President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) in Moscow.
In 2020, a federal appeals court overturned the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, saying the judge who oversaw the case didn’t adequately screen jurors for potential biases. (The Supreme Court later reimposed the sentence.)
Today’s Birthdays:
- Jazz composer-musician Kenny Burrell is 93.
- Actor Geraldine Chaplin is 80.
- Former movie studio executive Sherry Lansing is 80.
- Singer Gary Lewis is 78.
- International Tennis Hall of Famer Evonne Goolagong Cawley is 73.
- Actor Michael Biehn is 68.
- Rock singer-musician Daniel Ash (Love and Rockets) is 67.
- Entrepreneur Mark Cuban is 66.
- Rock musician Bill Berry (R.E.M.) is 66.
- Jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan is 65.
- Actor Wesley Snipes is 62.
- Musician Fatboy Slim is 61.
- Author J.K. Rowling is 59.
- Actor Dean Cain is 58.
- Actor Jim True-Frost is 58.
- Actor Ben Chaplin is 55.
- Actor Eve Best is 53.
- Football Hall of Famer Jonathan Ogden is 50.
- Country singer-musician Zac Brown is 46.
- Actor-producer-writer B.J. Novak is 45.
- Football Hall of Famer DeMarcus Ware is 42.
- NHL center Evgeni Malkin is 38.
- NASCAR driver Kyle Larson is 32.
- Hip-hop artist Lil Uzi Vert is 29.
- Actor Rico Rodriguez (TV: “Modern Family”) is 26.
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