On July 31, 1715, a fleet of Spanish ships carrying gold, silver and jewelry sank during a hurricane off the east Florida coast.
In 1777, during the Revolutionary War, the Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old French nobleman, was made a major-general in the American Continental Army.
In 1919, Germany’s Weimar Constitution was adopted by the republic of Germany.
In 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.”
In 1970, “The Huntley- Brinkley Report” came to an end as co-anchor Chet Huntley signed off; the broadcast was renamed “NBC Nightly News.”
In 1971, James Taylor went to No.1 on the US singles chart with the Carole King song ‘You’ve Got A Friend’, (included in her album Tapestry and James Taylor’s album Mud Slide Slim). The song would go on to win the 1971 Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal male Performance and Song Of The Year.
In 2014, the death toll from the worst Ebola outbreak in history surpassed 700 in West Africa.