Labor leader Jimmy Hoffa is reported missing

Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order of Roman Catholic missionaries and educators, dies in Rome. The Society of Jesus, as the Jesuit order is formally known, played an important role in the Counter-Reformation and eventually succeeded in converting millions around the world to Catholicism. Ignatius, the son of a noble and wealthy Spanish […]

On July 31, 1777, a 19-year-old French aristocrat, Marie-Joseph Paul Roch Yves Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, accepts a commission as a major-general in the Continental Army—without pay. During his service as the Continental Congress’ secret envoy to France, Silas Deane had, on December 7, 1776, struck an agreement with French military expert, Baron […]

On July 31, 1941, Hermann Göring, writing under instructions from Hitler, ordered Reinhard Heydrich, SS general and Heinrich Himmler’s number-two man, “to submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question.” Goering recounted briefly the […]

On July 31, 1973, Delta Flight 723 strikes a concrete seawall as it descends into Boston’s Logan International Airport amid heavy ground fog. The collision tears off some of the fuselage and the plane slams into the ground, breaking apart and bursting into flames. Almost all on board die instantly in what becomes the worst […]