What happened on 31 July?

7 events from the Ever-When timeline, ranked by how much they mattered.

1. 1919 Weimar Constitution adopted Adopted constitution of the post-WW1 German republic.
2. 1917 Battle of Passchendaele (Third Ypres) British muddy attritional offensive; emblematic of WW1 futility.
3. 1932 The Nazis become Germany's largest party At the summer election the NSDAP takes 37 per cent and 230 seats — the largest party, though short of a majority, and in November its vote actually falls. It is at that moment of s
4. 1965 Born: J. K. Rowling British author of the Harry Potter series.
5. 1914 Jean Jaurès is assassinated France's great socialist tribune — the one man who might have led Europe's workers against the coming war — is shot through a café window in Paris by a nationalist student. His mov
6. 1786 Burns's Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect The 'Kilmarnock edition': 612 copies of a ploughman's poems, printed to pay his passage to Jamaica, sell out in weeks and make Burns famous — he stays in Scotland.
7. 2006 Castro hands power to Raúl After emergency surgery, the ailing Fidel provisionally transfers his powers to his brother Raúl, and formally steps down as president in 2008.