Today in History: July 31, Phelps sets Olympic medal record

Today is Friday, July 31, the 212th day of 2026. There are 153 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On July 31, 2012, at the Summer Olympics in London, swimmer Michael Phelps won his 19th Olympic medal, becoming the most decorated Olympian of all time. (He would finish his career with 28 total Olympic medals, 23 of them gold.)

Also on this date:

In 1715, a fleet of Spanish ships carrying gold, silver and jewelry sank during a hurricane off the east Florida coast; of some 2,500 crew members, more than 1,000 died.

In 1777, the 19-year-old Marquis de Lafayette received a commission as major general in the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress.

In 1919, Germany’s Weimar Constitution was adopted by the republic’s National Assembly.

In 1945, Pierre Laval, premier of the pro-Nazi Vichy government in France, surrendered to U.S. authorities in Austria; he was turned over to France, which later tried and executed him.

In 1957, the Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations designed to detect Soviet bombers approaching North America, went into operation.

In 1964, the U.S. lunar probe Ranger 7 took the first close-up images of the moon’s surface.

In 1971, Apollo 15 crew members David Scott and James Irwin became the first astronauts to use a lunar rover on the surface of the moon.

In 1972, vice-presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton withdrew from the Democratic ticket with George McGovern following disclosures that Eagleton had received electroshock therapy to treat clinical depression.

In 1991, President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) in Moscow.

In 2020, a federal appeals court overturned the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, saying the judge who oversaw the case didn’t adequately screen jurors for potential biases. (The Supreme Court reimposed the sentence in 2022.)

In 2022, al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan; Al-Zawahri and the better-known Osama bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks.

Today’s Birthdays: Jazz composer-musician Kenny Burrell is 95. Actor Geraldine Chaplin is 82. Former movie studio executive Sherry Lansing is 82. Singer Gary Lewis is 80. International Tennis Hall of Famer Evonne Goolagong Cawley is 75. Actor Michael Biehn is 70. Rock singer-musician Daniel Ash (Love and Rockets) is 69. Entrepreneur Mark Cuban is 68. Rock musician Bill Berry (R.E.M.) is 68. Jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan is 67. Actor Wesley Snipes is 64. Musician Fatboy Slim is 63. Author J.K. Rowling is 61. Actor Dean Cain is 60. Actor Jim True-Frost is 60. Actor Ben Chaplin is 57. Actor Eve Best is 55. Football Hall of Famer Jonathan Ogden is 52. Country singer-musician Zac Brown is 48. Actor-producer-writer B.J. Novak is 47. Football Hall of Famer DeMarcus Ware is 44. NHL center Evgeni Malkin is 40. NASCAR driver Kyle Larson is 34. Hip-hop artist Lil Uzi Vert is 31. Actor Rico Rodriguez (TV: “Modern Family”) is 28.