July 31

• July 31, 431
  First Council of Ephesus ends with emergence of cult of the Virgin Mary and exile of Nestorius, Archbishop of Constantinople, who do not believe that Christ was truly God
• July 31, 904
  Arab forces capture Byzantium city of Thessaloniki for a short term
• July 31, 1498
  During his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus arrives at an island he named Trinidad because of its 3 hills
• July 31, 1703
  English novelist Daniel Defoe is made to stand in the pillory as punishment for offending the government and church with his satire "The Shortest Way With Dissenters", but is pelted with flowers
• July 31, 1922
  18-year-old Ralph Samuelson rides world's first water skis in Minnesota, United States
• July 31, 1932
  The Nazi party becomes the largest single party in the German parliament after German federal election
• July 31, 2007
  Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, the longest-running British Army operation, comes to an end
• July 31, 2011
  In Thailand over 12.8 million people are affected by severe flooding, which couses damages estimated at US$45 billion and leaves 790 people killed, with 58 of the country's 77 provinces affected

June 22

• June 22, 168 BC
  Rome under general Lucius Aemilius Paullus defeats Philip V of Macedon at battle of Pydna and assures dominance in Greece
• June 22, 431
  First Council of Ephesus, the third ecumenical council of the early Christian Church, opens
• June 22, 1476
  The Swiss overcome Burgundy's Charles the Bold at the Battle of Morat during Burgundian Wars
• June 22, 1497
  Antitax insurrection in Cornwall is suppressed at Blackheath, London
• June 22, 1633
  Italian scientist Galileo Galilei is forced to recant that the Earth orbits the Sun and commuted to house arrest by the Roman Catholic Inquisition
• June 22, 1691
  Ahmed II succeeded Suleiman II in the Ottoman House of Osman
• June 22, 1740
  King Frederick II of Prussia ends torture and guarantees freedom of religion and the press
• June 22, 1783
  A poisonous cloud from Laki volcanic eruption in Iceland reaches Le Havre in France
• June 22, 1799
  In France a scientific congress adopts the length of the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance along the surface of the Earth from its equator to its pole, in a curved line of latitude passing through the center of Paris
• June 22, 1815
  Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates a second time, in favour of his son, Napoléon Francis Joseph Charles Bonaparte
• June 22, 1816
  An English statute establishes a single gold standard for money, with silver coins reduced to status of tokens of limited legal tender
• June 22, 1847
  The first doughnut with a hole in it is created in United States
• June 22, 1874
  Doctor Andrew Taylor Still of Macon, Missouri, founds osteopathy, a type of alternative medicine, that claims that the wellbeing of an individual depends on their bones, muscles, ligaments and connective tissue functioning smoothly together
• June 22, 1922
  The Irish Civil War begins between Irish republicans over the Anglo-Irish Treaty shortly after the establishment of the Irish Free State
• June 22, 1922
  Pius XI becomes Pope
• June 22, 1940
  After German blitz France formally surrenders at the signing ceremony, held in the same wagon-lit railroad car used by French Marshal Ferdinand Foch to accept the surrender of Germany in 1918
• June 22, 1941
  Over 4 million soldiers of the Axis powers invade the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, the largest military operation in human history, opening the Eastern Front of World War II
• June 22, 1944
  Soviet forces, comprised of about 1.2 million men, 2715 tanks, and 5327 aircraft, launch Operation Bagration on German Army Group Centre to clear German forces from the Belorussian SSR and eastern Poland
• June 22, 1945
  Okinawa, Japan, is declared captured by the Allies with total US casualties about 80,000 and 120,000 Japanese
• June 22, 1978
  Charon, a satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto, is discovered by James Christy
• June 22, 1992
  Two skeletons excavated in Yekaterinburg are identified as Czar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra