This Day in History: July 31

Jul 31, 2022 News

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Compiled by Zena Henry

Columbus becomes first European to discover Trinidad

Kaieteur News – On his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus became the first European to discover the island of Trinidad. The Italian explorer and navigator’s bad luck on the third voyage began almost immediately.

After making slow progress from Spain, his fleet hit the doldrums, which is a calm, hot stretch of ocean with little or no wind. Columbus and his men spent several days battling heat and thirst with no wind to propel their ships. After a while, the wind returned, and they were able to continue. Columbus veered to the north, because the ships were low on water, and he wanted to resupply in the familiar Caribbean. On July 31, they sighted an island, which Columbus named Trinidad. They were able to resupply there and continue exploring and later arrived on the South American mainland.

Adolf Hitler instructs Nazi official to submit plan to kill Jews

The belief is that disgraced Nazi leader Adolf Hitler hated Jews because he saw them as less of a human because they did not stand up to the considerations of the Aryan race claimed to be a full European breed. As such on July 31, Hitler ordered his Nazi official to produce a plan to annihilate the Jewish people. Described as the Holocaust, Hitler ordered his Nazi general, Reinhard Heydrich, SS 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.”

Goering recounted briefly the outline for that “final solution” that had been drawn up on January 24, 1939: “emigration and evacuation in the best possible way.” This programme of what would become mass, systematic extermination was to encompass “all the territories of Europe under German occupation.” Heydrich already had some experience with organising such a plan, having reintroduced the cruel medieval concept of the ghetto in Warsaw after the German occupation of Poland. Jews were crammed into cramped walled areas of major cities and held as prisoners, as their property was confiscated and given to either local Germans or non-Jewish Polish peasants.

Behind this horrendous scheme, carried out month by month, country by country, was Hitler, whose “greatest weakness was found in the vast numbers of oppressed peoples who hated [him] and the immoral ways of his government.” This assessment was Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s, given at a Kremlin meeting that same day, July 31, with American advisor to the president Harry Hopkins. (History.com)

Fidel Castro hands Cuban power over to little brother Raúl Castro

Cuban President Fidel Castro was undergoing intestinal surgery and provisionally handed over power in the Communist island nation to his younger brother Raúl, a statement read on Cuban television aid in 2006. Fidel Castro, 79, led Cuba since a 1959 revolution. His brother, Raúl Castro, 75, was the first vice president of the country, and as such, the designated successor to his brother.

The 2006–2008 Cuban transfer of presidential duties was the handover of the title of president and presidential duties from Castro to his brother Raúl Castro, the next-in-line-of-succession person in Cuba, following Fidel’s operation and recovery from an undisclosed digestive illness believed to be diverticulitis. Although Raúl Castro exercised the duties of president, Fidel Castro retained the title of President of Cuba, formally the President of the Council of State of Cuba, during this period.

Fidel had been in power since 1959 and held the title of President of Cuba since 1976. At the time of his operation in July 2006, Castro was the last governing communist leader from the Cold War era. Fidel felt proud to have not only thwarted the Bay of Pigs Invasion, failed CIA attempts to kill him, and acts of Cuban exile violence, but also outlived the Cold War and the USSR, and exhorting the Cuban people brave the crippling effects of the US embargo against Cuba (largely to whip up patriotic fury against the US) and the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. While the radical left (especially Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales) praised Castro as a tireless defender of the poor and oppressed in Latin America and Africa while standing up to US hegemony in the Americas, Fidel Castro’s sworn enemies, namely the US and Cuban-Americans, saw him as a ruthless tyrant who broke his promise to restore democracy to Cuba by imposing a repressive communist government on the island that muzzled all opposition and wrecked the Cuban economy.

On February 19, 2008 Fidel announced that he would not stand for re-election as President at the next meeting of the National Assembly of People’s Power. Raúl was elected President by the National Assembly on February 24, 2008. Fidel Castro died eight years later on November 25, 2016.

 Michael Phelps breaks record for most Olympics medals

The legendary American swimmer, Michael Phelps won 28 medals across five Olympics, making him the most decorated athlete in the history of the Summer Games. Michael Phelps, arguably the best swimmer in history, is regarded as one of the greatest athletes of all time, not just due to his record-breaking feats, but also due to the longevity of his career.

Born on June 30, 1985, in Baltimore, Maryland, Phelps took to swimming at the age of seven. He trained with Coach Bob Bowman at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club and quickly broke multiple age-group records.

His large frame, broad shoulders and big feet, which act like fins in the water, made his body the perfect fit for swimming. So much that Phelps won the highest number of medals in the entire Olympics – 28 medals across five Summer Games. Michael Phelps’ Olympics medals tally consists of 23 gold medals – the most Olympic gold medals ever won – three silver and two bronze medals. (Olympics)

Caribana weekend now attracts over a million spectators

Since its beginnings as a small parade in 1967, Toronto’s Caribbean Carnival has become one of the world’s largest celebrations of Caribbean culture. Titled Caribana until 2010, it annually attracts more than a million spectators with island-style parades, parties, food and music. Beyond the annual long weekend, there is now a month full of activities.

Carnivals are celebrated throughout the Caribbean on Emancipation Day Weekend (typically the first weekend in August) to commemorate the abolition of slavery in the West Indies. In Toronto, it provides both a cultural and artistic connection between Canadians and Caribbean culture. Ontario is home to more than half of Canada’s Black African and Caribbean population, and 37 percent live in the province’s capital of Toronto. Although some immigration took place in the late 1700s, most of the people who left the Caribbean for Canada arrived in the latter half of the 20th century.

 

 

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