Template:On this day - July 31

Ignatius of Loyola

• 1498 – On his third voyage to America, Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to reach the Island of Trinidad, inhabited by the Iñeri and Carib tribes.
• 1556 – Death of Ignatius of Loyola, Spanish soldier turned religious, founder of the Society of Jesus (b. 1491).
• 1564 – Death of Luis de Velasco y Ruiz de Alarcón, Spanish aristocrat and Viceroy of New Spain between 1550 and 1564 (b. 1511).
• 1588 – The Spanish Armada reaches the port of Plymouth, on the coast of England.
• 1766 – Birth of Rafael García Goyena, New Granadan writer, poet and jurist, who carried out his work in the Captaincy General of Guatemala (d. 1823).
• 1817 – Near La Asunción (Province of Margarita, present-day Venezuela) the historic Battle of Matasiete takes place.
• 1826 – In Valencia (Spain), the Junta de Fe of the Diocese of Valencia executes the schoolmaster Cayetano Ripoll, accused of heresy.
• 1896 – Birth of Luis Ceballos y Fernández de Córdoba, Spanish engineer and naturist (d. 1967).
• 1900 – In Colombia, Vice President José Manuel Marroquín stages a coup d'état against Manuel Antonio Sanclemente.
• 1909 – On the Mexican coast of the Pacific Ocean, a second earthquake of great intensity (the first was on the previous day) leaves the port of Acapulco in complete ruin.
• 1948 – Death of Manuel Savio, military engineer considered the father of the Argentine steel industry (b. 1892).
• 2006 – In Cuba, Fidel Castro temporarily transfers to his brother, Raúl Castro, the Presidency of the Council of State and, with it, the presidency of the country.
• 2020 – Death of Concepción Zendrera Tomás, Spanish publisher and translator (b. 1919).