July 31 is

Mutts Day

World Ranger Day

Jump for Jelly Beans Day

Always Live Better than Yesterday Day

Uncommon Musical Instruments Day

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Canada –
Calgary AB: Chasing Summer

India – Martyrdom Day of Shahid Udham Singh

Maldives – Independence Week celebration (last day)

United States –
California: Gilroy Garlic Festival
Hawaii: Ka Hae Hawaii Day
Montana: Red Ants Pants Festival

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On This Day in HISTORY

30 BC – Mark Anthony’s army deserts after Battle of Alexandria

781 – Oldest recorded eruption of Mount Fuji in Japan

1492 – Alhambra Decree takes effect, Jews are expelled from Spain

1703 – Daniel Defoe, in the pillory for his satirical pamphlet, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, pelted by London crowds with flowers instead of rotten produce or stones. His friends sell copies of offending pamphlet, along with his poem A Hymn to the Pillory, trying to raise his bond, but Defoe spends next 3 months in Newgate prison.

1790 – First U.S. patent issued to Samuel Hopkins for potash process

1792 – Cornerstone for the U.S. Mint laid in Philadelphia PA

MORE! For Leo the MGM Lion, J.K.Rowling and Jimmy Hoffa, click

1845 – French Army adds the saxophone, invented by Adolphe Sax, to its military band

1856 – Christchurch, New Zealand, is chartered as a city

1865 – World’s first narrow-gauge mainline railway opens in Queensland, Australia

1874 – Dr. Patrick Healy is first Black male president of a mostly white U.S. university

1919 – Weimar Constitution adopted by German national assembly

1928 – First roar of MGM Lion heard in talking picture White Shadows on the South Seas

1930 – First radio broadcast of mystery program The Shadow

1938 – Archaeologists in Persepolis discover gold and silver plates of Darius the Great

1942 – Harry James and his Orchestra records “I’ve Hear that Song Before”

1954 – First ascent of K2, by Italian expedition led by Ardito Desio

1964 – NASA space probe Ranger 7 transmits pictures of the moon’s surface

1965 – J.K. Rowling, future Harry Potter author, is born

1969 – Soviet thieves steal phone parts from thousands of Moscow phone booths to convert acoustic guitars to electric, causing city-wide communication snafu

1970 – Black Tot Day in the British Royal Navy, the final ration of rum issued

1971 – Apollo 15 astronauts get first ride on the moon’s surface in a lunar rover vehicle

1975 – U.S. labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa disappears, still not found

1991 – U.S. and Soviet Union leaders sign Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty

1995 – Selena’s debut English album, “Dreaming of You” hits #1, a first for Latin artists

2006 – In Cuba, Fidel Castro hands over power to his brother, Raúl

2007 – First ‘World Ranger Day,’ honoring park rangers killed or injured protecting the world’s cultural and natural treasures, promoted by 63 member associations of the International Ranger Federation, which was founded on this day in 1992

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Visuals

• Cute mutt with red ball
• International Flags
• Mount Fuji from the air
• Saxophone made by inventor Adolphe Sax – Bate Collection of Musical Instruments, Oxford University
• Apollo 15 lunar rover
• International Rangers Federation Conference May 2016 – http://www.internationalrangers.org/world-ranger-day/