Today’s Motto: ‘Never mistake the menu for the meal…’

....or the Track for the Target'

As Every Day makes a new beginning in life, it brings new opportunities, opens new avenues, to perform and make a mark, to write a Page in the History Books!

By Editor's Desk Last updated Jul 31, 2026

This is Your Day-TODAY: Take a Determined Step Forward and Make History!

On this day, 31 Jul….

1658 – Aurangzeb appoints himself Mongol emperor of Bharat (India), calling himself ‘Alamgir’, meaning “Conqueror of the World.”

1849 – Benjamin Chambers was issued a U.S. patent for the breech loading cannon. The advantage of breech loading was to speed up the reloading process, allowing troops to fire more rounds per minute. Prior to this technology, troops used musket loading guns and had to run to the front of the gun to reload – wasting time and risking lives. Breech loading guns required a mechanism able to withstand the strain of firing and still operate smoothly and quickly to allow the next round to be fired. This required not only a superior material but expert machining/operating skill.

1861 – 9,300 mm rainfall in July in Cherrapunji, Assam becomes a world record.

1910 – Marconi telegraph signals were used in a murder case for the first time. American-born Dr Hawley Crippen and his mistress, Ethel Le Neve, disguised as a boy, were arrested for the murder of his wife in England. Her remains were discovered 13 Jul 1910. She had been poisoned with hyoscine, an extract of the deadly plant henbane. An arrest warrant was issued 16 Jul 1910. Crippen was spotted mid-Atlantic as they sailed from Antwerp to Canada on the SS Montrose, the first ship to be equipped with radio-telegraph, and police in London were alerted by its skipper, Captain Kendall.

1965 – The last cigarette commercial appeared on British television. (Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States was published. It was based on over 7000 scientific articles that linked tobacco use with cancer and other diseases. This report led to laws requiring warning labels on tobacco products and to restrictions on tobacco advertisements. As these began to come into force, tobacco marketing became more subtle, and a number of advertisements designed to appeal to children, particularly those featuring Joe Camel resulting in increased awareness and uptake of smoking among children. However, restrictions did have an effect on adult quit rates, with its use declining to the point that by 2004, nearly half of all Americans who had ever smoked had quit).

1971 – Dave Scott became the first person to drive a vehicle on the Moon – the battery-powered Lunar Rover (LRV) – as part of the Apollo 15 mission to the mountainous Hadley-Apennine region. This LRV, the first to be carried on an Apollo mission, built by Boeing, weighed 460 lb and folded into a space 5 ft by 20 in.

2003 – Felix Baumgartner became the first man to cross the English Channel by unpowered flight. He jumped from a plane about 9,800-m above Dover, England and glided 36-km across the Channel in a 10-min flight wearing a special suit with carbon-fibre wings across his back. In sub-zero air, the 34-yr-old Austrian’s flight began at about 220 mph, slowing to around 135 mph by the time he landed by parachute.