A long naval tradition was discarded in the name of progress on July 31, 1970 - day since dubbed "Black Tot Day".
That day marked the end of the UK Royal Navy's issue of its daily rum ration, which had been in place since the mid-1700s.
It was deemed unsuitable for the modern naval service, as daily duties grew more complex and technical.
Personnel farewelled their rum ration with black armbands and even mock funerals of casks buried at sea.
Australia's navy had previously discontinued its rum ration in the 1920s.
The British Army's longest-running operation began in 1969 and ended on July 31, 2007, when its last troops were withdrawn from Northern Ireland.
The troops were sent in at the request of Northern Ireland's pro-union government in 1969 following the riots of August that year that marked the beginning of the period known as The Troubles.
For decades, UK troops remained stationed in Northern Ireland, while the Irish Republican Army waged a guerilla campaign against them. More than 700 personnel were killed in paramilitary attacks.
1998's Good Friday Agreement saw the scale of the operation vastly reduced almost a decade before it finally ended.
On July 31, 2012, US swimmer Michael Phelps became the most-medalled athlete in Olympic history after Team USA won the 4x200-metre freestyle relay at the London Olympic Games.
His victory broke a record set by Soviet Union gymnast Larisa Latynina in 1964.
Phelps continues to hold the top spot, with 28 Olympic medals including 23 gold, the only US athlete in the top 10.
Latynina remains in second place with 18 medals, including nine golds.
On July 31, 1941, history's greatest crime against humanity received its orders when Nazi official Hermann Goering ordered SS leader Reinhard Heydrich (pictured) 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".
The "Final Solution" was a standing term among Nazi leaders for what became the Holocaust, in which six million Jewish people were murdered by Nazi Germany.
Two weeks before his 80th birthday, the long-standing leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro, delegated his presidential duties to his brother Raul on July 31, 2006, as he underwent surgery for intestinal bleeding.
It was the beginning of Castro's gradual stepping down from the role, before he ultimately retired in 2011.
He had led the revolution to establish a one-party Communist government in Cuba and was prime minister from 1959 to 1976, before ruling as president from 1976 to 2008. He remained first secretary of the country's Communist Party until 2011.
The Beatles' Yesterday and Today topped the US Billboard charts on July 30, 1966, staying there for five weeks.
But the success of the album came after weeks of outrage over the original cover of the record itself.
In the original cover, the band was draped with meat and holding the disassembled parts of baby dolls.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney argued the cover was the band's statement against the Vietnam War.
But retailers in the US were disgusted, with many refusing to stock the record in protest.
Capitol Records recalled all copies of 750,000 copies of the album and reissued it with a much less offensive cover.
Now copies of the "butcher cover" of Yesterday and Today sell for tens of thousands of dollars.
Returning from a mission to deliver the first nuclear bomb across the Pacific, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine on July 30, 1945.
About 300 of the 1195 sailors aboard the cruiser went down with the ship.
The shipwreck gave the scent of blood in the water, which drew hundreds of sharks.
After feasting on the dead sailors, the sharks then took to attacking living sailors clinging to flotsam.
Over the course of four days, nearly 600 sailors died of dehydration, hypothermia and shark attacks.
Meanwhile, the Navy had assumed the Indianapolis had reached its destination and never looked for it.
The wreckage was spotted on August 2. Only 316 sailors survived the ordeal.
A mob of Czech Hussites storm the town hall in Prague and fatally throw members of the council out a window on July 30, 1419.
The defenestration of Prague triggered a major war across Bohemia, as it was then known.
It was the first of three defenestrations in Prague that became major turning points for religious conflict in the region.
Three shipwrecked sailors are rescued adrift in the Atlantic on July 29, 1884, five days too late for the doomed cabin boy.
The group had been hired to sail the yacht the Mignonette from England to Australia, but had been wrecked in a gale en route.
After days with no food or water, the three men resolved to kill cabin boy Richard Parker, who was already ill from drinking seawater.
After killing Parker, they ate his remains.
Upon return to Britain, two of the three, including Captain Tom Dudley (pictured), were put on trial for murder.
The case R v Dudley and Stephens ruled that necessity was not a defence to murder.
The judgement came despite overwhelming public support to free the accused.
Despite being found guilty, they were sentenced to just six months' jail.
In an eerie coincidence, a novel by Edgar Allan Poe (pictured) published 49 years earlier told a very similar story.
In The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Poe writes of a group of shipwrecked sailors who have to murder and eat a cabin boy to survive.
The cabin boy in the novel was also named Richard Parker.
Angry at receiving fines and defect notices for his tractor and rotary hoe, Bega farmer Myron Kelly detonated a bomb under the local policeman's house on July 29, 1957.
The explosion killed Senior Constable Kenneth Desmond Coussens, his wife, and their baby son.
When arrested, Kelly told investigators he merely wanted to scare Coussens with the explosion.
But the coroner was unconvinced, doubting Kelly would have used 240 sticks of gelignite for anything other than a murder attempt.
A confrontation between professional wrestler Jerry Lawler and comedian Andy Kaufman descended into violence on Late Night With David Letterman on July 28, 1982.
Kaufman had been touring as the self-declared world champion of "Inter-Gender Wrestling", performing staged matches against women.
Lawler had taken issue with Kaufman's antics, culminating in a debate on the late night show.
As words became heated, Lawler stood up and slapped Kaufman hard across the face.
Kaufman responded by throwing coffee in Lawler's face and running away.
It was not revealed the entire feud was a stunt until the release of the Kaufman biopic 'Man on the Moon'.
In the film, Jim Carrey played Kaufman and Jerry Lawler played himself.
Kaufman had died two years after the television appearance.
Lift operator Betty Lou Oliver cheated death twice in a matter of minutes on July 28, 1945.
Oliver suffered a broken pelvis, back and neck when a plane crashed into the Empire State Building where she was working.
She was put in a stretcher and placed alone in the elevator to the ground floor.
But a piece of the engine had severed the elevator cable, and she dropped 75 stories.