1922<\/strong> – Benito Mussolini became prime minister of Italy.<\/p>\n 1926<\/strong> – Magician Harry Houdini died of gangrene and peritonitis resulting from a ruptured appendix. His appendix had been damaged twelve days earlier when he had been punched in the stomach by a student unexpectedly. During a lecture, Houdini had commented on the strength of his stomach muscles and their ability to withstand hard blows.<\/p>\n 1940<\/strong> – The British air victory in the Battle of Britain prevented Germany from invading Britain.<\/p>\n 1941<\/strong> – Mount Rushmore was declared complete after 14 years of work. At the time the 60-foot busts of U.S.\u00a0Presidents George Washington,\u00a0Thomas Jefferson,\u00a0Theodore Roosevelt, and\u00a0Abraham Lincoln\u00a0were finished.<\/p>\n 1941<\/strong> – The\u00a0U.S.\u00a0Navy destroyer\u00a0Reuben James<\/i>\u00a0was torpedoed by a German submarine near Iceland. The\u00a0U.S.\u00a0had not yet entered World War II. More than 100 men were killed.<\/p>\n 1952<\/strong> – The\u00a0U.S.\u00a0detonated its first hydrogen bomb.<\/p>\n 1954<\/strong> – The Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) began a revolt against French rule.<\/p>\n 1955<\/strong> – Britain’s Princess Margaret announced she would not marry Royal Air Force Captain Peter Townsend.<\/p>\n 1956<\/strong> – Rear Admiral G.J. Dufek became the first person to land an airplane at the South Pole. Dufek also became the first person to set foot on the South Pole.<\/p>\n 1959<\/strong> – Lee Harvey Oswald, a former\u00a0U.S.\u00a0Marine from Fort Worth,\u00a0TX, announced that he would never return to the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0At the time he was in Moscow, Russia.<\/p>\n 1961<\/strong> – In the Soviet Union, the body of Joseph Stalin was removed from Lenin’s Tomb where it was on public display.<\/p>\n 1968<\/strong> –\u00a0U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson\u00a0ordered a halt to all\u00a0U.S.\u00a0bombing of North Vietnam.<\/p>\n 1969<\/strong> – Wal-Mart Discount City stores were incorporated as\u00a0Wal-Mart Stores, Inc 1983<\/strong> – The\u00a0U.S.\u00a0Defense Department acknowledged that during the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0led invasion of Grenada, that a\u00a0U.S.\u00a0Navy plane had mistakenly bombed a civilian hospital.<\/p>\n 1984<\/strong> – Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated near her residence by two Sikh security guards. Her son, Rajiv, was sworn in as prime minister.<\/p>\n 1992<\/strong> – In Liberia, it was announced that five American nuns had been killed near Monrovia. Rebels loyal to Charles Taylor were blamed for the murders.<\/p>\n 1993<\/strong> – River Phoenix died at the age of 23 after collapsing outside The Viper Room in Hollywood.<\/p>\n 1993<\/strong> – The play “Wonderful Tennessee” closed after only 9 performances.<\/p>\n 1994<\/strong> – 68 people were killed when an American Eagle ATR-72, plunged into a northern Indiana farm.<\/p>\n 1997<\/strong> – Louise Woodward, British au pair, was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder in the death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen. She was released after her sentence was reduced to manslaughter.<\/p>\n 1998<\/strong> – Iraq announced that it was halting all dealings with U.N. arms inspectors. The inspectors were investigating the country’s weapons of mass destruction stemming from Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.<\/p>\n 1999<\/strong> – EgyptAir Flight 990 crashed off the coast of Nantucket, MA, killing all 217 people aboard.<\/p>\n 1999<\/strong> – Leaders from the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. The event ended a centuries-old doctrinal dispute over the nature of faith and salvation.<\/p>\n 2001<\/strong> – Microsoft and the U.S. Justice Department reached a tentative agreement to settle the antitrust case against the software company.<\/p>\n 2007<\/strong> – Google shares hit $700 for the first time.<\/p>\n 2008<\/strong> – Distribution Video Audio, Inc. shipped its final shipment of VHS tapes to stores. The company was the last major United States supplier of pre-recorded VHS tapes.<\/p>\n 2011<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 The\u00a0global population\u00a0of humans reaches seven billion. This day is now recognized by the\u00a0United Nations\u00a0as the\u00a0Day of Seven Billion.<\/p>\n 2014<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 During a test flight, the\u00a0VSS\u00a0Enterprise<\/i>, a\u00a0Virgin Galactic\u00a0experimental spaceflight test vehicle, suffers a\u00a0catastrophic in-flight breakup\u00a0and\u00a0crashes\u00a0in the\u00a0Mojave Desert,\u00a0California,<\/p>\n 2015<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Metrojet Flight 9268\u00a0is bombed over the northern\u00a0Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board.<\/p>\n 2017<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0A truck drives into a crowd\u00a0in\u00a0Lower Manhattan, New York City, killing eight people.<\/p>\n History of 31 October 1914 – The Ottoman Empire (Turkey) joined the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria). 1922 – Benito Mussolini became prime minister of Italy. 1926 – Magician Harry Houdini died of gangrene and peritonitis resulting from a ruptured appendix. His appendix had been damaged twelve days earlier when he had been punched […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2509,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[82],"tags":[979,83,498],"class_list":{"0":"post-15988","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-history","8":"tag-31-october","9":"tag-history","10":"tag-todays-history"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fundabook.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/today-history.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pab1DJ-49S","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundabook.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundabook.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundabook.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundabook.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundabook.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15988"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fundabook.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24018,"href":"https:\/\/fundabook.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15988\/revisions\/24018"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundabook.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundabook.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundabook.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundabook.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/beacon.affil.walmart.com\/affil\/ttap.gif?affillt=3&affilwmls=es5mjGv9FYw&affilsid=0&affiloid=223073.10006940\")
1981<\/strong> – Antiqua and Barbuda became independent of Great Britain.<\/p>\nCelebrating Birthday Today<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n