Today in History....July 31

On this day in …


* 1777, the Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old French nobleman, was
made a major-general in the American Continental Army

* 1919, Germany's Weimar Constitution was adopted by the republic's
National Assembly

* 1945, Pierre Laval, premier of the pro-Nazi Vichy government,
surrendered to U.S. authorities in Austria; he was turned over to
France, which later tried and executed him

* 1948, President Harry Truman helped dedicate New York
International Airport (later John F. Kennedy International Airport)
at Idlewild Field

* 1957, the Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations
designed to detect Soviet bombers approaching North America, went
into operation

* 1964, the American space probe Ranger VII transmitted pictures of
the moon's surface

* 1972, Democratic vice-presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton
withdrew from the ticket with George McGovern following disclosures
Eagleton had once undergone psychiatric treatment

* 1987, Iranian pilgrims and riot police clashed in the Muslim holy
city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, resulting in some 400 deaths,
according to the Saudi government, which blamed the Iranians for the
violence

* 1991, President George Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S.
Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Moscow

* 1997, in Brooklyn, N.Y., police seized five bombs believed bound
for terrorist attacks on New York City subways by practitioners of
that "religion of peace"

* 2002, a bomb exploded by practitioners of that "religion of
peace" inside a cafeteria at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
kills nine people, including five Americans

* 2006, Cuban President Fidel Castro temporarily ceded power to his
brother, Raul, after gastrointestinal surgery