July 31: Ka Hae Hawai'i Day (Flag Day) in Hawaii; Feast day of Saint Ignatius of Loyola
- 1703 – English writer Daniel Defoe was placed in a pillory for seditious libel after publishing a pamphlet politically satirising the High Church Tories.
- 1777 – The Second Continental Congress passed a resolution allowing French nobleman Marquis de Lafayette to enter the American revolutionary forces as a Major General.
- 1941 – The Holocaust: Under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring ordered SS General Reinhard Heydrich to settle "the final solution of the Jewish question".
- 1999 – NASA's Lunar Prospector (artist's impression pictured) was deliberately crashed into the Shoemaker crater near the Moon's south pole in an unsuccessful attempt to detect the presence of water.
- 2006 – Following intestinal surgery, Fidel Castro provisionally transferred the duties of the Cuban presidency to his brother Raúl.