An Aristocratic Pulse Joins the American Rebellion
On July 31, 1777, the Continental Congress passed a resolution appointing the Marquis de Lafayette as a major general in the Continental Army, accepting his offer to serve without compensation ...
Transforming the Cultural Heart of an Institution
Inaugurated on July 31, 1874, Father Patrick Francis Healy, S.J., became president of Georgetown University and soon set in motion a transformation that would reshape its physical and intellectual landscape ...
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The Sculpted Silhouette of a Cultural Icon
On July 31, 1946, Norma Jeane Dougherty signed her first film contract with Twentieth Century Fox, earning a modest weekly salary—reported variously as $125 or $150. Yet it would be ...
A Motorized Crusade for the Democratic Heart
On July 31, 1913, a motorcade of sixty decorated automobiles rolled from Hyattsville, Maryland, to the U.S. Capitol—not on foot or horseback, but in the vanguard of the 20th century ...
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The Gentle Heart Behind a Towering Persona
Born July 31, 1932, actor Ted Cassidy appeared in numerous films and television shows of the 1960s and ’70s but is best remembered for his role as Lurch on The ...
Tracing Tracks Across the Lunar Dust
July 31, 1971, was the first time that a lunar roving vehicle was driven by American astronauts on the moon. It was driven by Apollo 15 Astronauts David Scott & ...
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A Beacon of Hope on the North Shore
The Split Rock Lighthouse, perched atop a 130-foot cliff on Minnesota’s North Shore of Lake Superior, was first lit on July 31, 1910. Its construction followed the devastating Mataafa storm ...
The Appointment of an Unyielding Pulse
On July 31, 1861—exactly 84 years to the day after the Marquis de Lafayette was commissioned a major general in the Continental Army—Abraham Lincoln appointed Ulysses S. Grant brigadier general ...
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Codifying the Spark of Human Ingenuity
On July 31, 1790, the United States issued its first patent—to Samuel Hopkins—for a new method of making potash. Since then, the U.S. has granted over 12 million patents, with ...
The Foundation of Sovereignty and Economic Trust
After Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1792 on April 2, President George Washington appointed the noted astronomer and instrument maker David Rittenhouse as the first Director of the United ...
A Shield of Innovation Born from Synthetic Strands
Stephanie Kwolek, the pioneering chemist who invented Kevlar, was born on July 31, 1923, in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. Working in an era when women faced significant hurdles in ...
The Lifesaving Vigil of the Heroine of Newport
The front page of Harper’s Weekly on July 31, 1869, featured engravings titled “Miss Ida Lewis, the Heroine of Newport,” alongside an image of Lime Rock Lighthouse. Ida Lewis spent ...
Valor Amidst the Shrapnel of Sicily
During the Allied invasion of Sicily on July 31, 1943, near Gagliano, Sergeant Gerry H. Kisters helped capture an enemy machine-gun position, then advanced alone against a second emplacement. Struck ...
Postwar Serenity and the Disquiet of Reconstruction
Several young women gather in a sun-dappled garden in Winslow Homer’s engraving “What Shall We Do Next?”, published in Harper’s Bazar on July 31, 1869. Their figures are arranged like ...
The Final Sacrifice of a Fallen Prisoner
Standing with determination beside a fluted column, Captain Frederick Hurst of Company E, 48th New York Infantry Regiment, was photographed between 1861 and 1863 by A.A. Turner and published by ...
Telephony and the Face of a Silent Icon
The American inventor Herbert Eugene Ives was born in Philadelphia on July 31, 1882. In 1924, he transmitted and reconstructed the first color facsimile—a natural-color photograph of silent film star ...
The Iron Will and Infrastructure of a Metropolis
The 87th Mayor of New York City, Abram Stevens Hewitt, was born on July 31, 1822, in Haverstraw, New York. In the mid‑1800s, he co‑founded an iron mill in Trenton, ...
