2 August 1531

The animated film Castle in the Sky, the first from Studio Ghibli, was released.

A flash fire killed 50 people at a leisure centre in Douglas, Isle of Man.

The English rock band the Who released Who's Next, their only album to top the UK charts.

Star Dust, a British South American Airways airliner, crashed into Mount Tupungato in the Argentine Andes; its wreckage was not found until 1998.

Leo Szilard (pictured) penned a letter, signed by Albert Einstein and addressed to U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning that Germany may develop atomic bombs, leading to the establishment of the Manhattan Project.

At the California Institute of Technology, American physicist Carl David Anderson proved the existence of antimatter with the discovery of the positron, for which he would receive the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Calvin Coolidge became the 30th president of the United States after Warren G. Harding suffered a fatal heart attack.

Nepalese author Krishna Lal Adhikari (pictured) was sentenced to nine years in prison for publishing a book about the cultivation of corn alleged to contain attacks on the ruling dynasty.

An explosion, blamed on Austro-Hungarian saboteurs, sank the Italian dreadnought Leonardo da Vinci.

The French army's general headquarters was activated in anticipation of war with Germany.

One of the world's earliest underground tube railways opened in the Tower Subway (interior depicted), a tunnel beneath the River Thames in London.

The first United States census was officially completed, with the nation's residential population enumerated to be 3,929,214.

While on a hunting trip in the New Forest, King William II of England was killed by an arrow through the lung loosed by one of his own men.

Unpopular among the Senate aristocracy for his reforming efforts, Roman emperor Majorian was deposed by Ricimer and executed five days later.

An allied army led by Philip II of Macedon overcame the forces of city-states led by Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea, securing Macedonian hegemony over the majority of ancient Greece.

Air France Flight 358 lands at Toronto Pearson International Airport and runs off the runway, causing the plane to burst into flames, leaving 12 injuries and no fatalities.

Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on STS-43 to deploy the TDRS-5 satellite.

Iraqi invasion of Kuwait: Iraq invades Kuwait and temporarily establishes the Republic of Kuwait puppet state on the orders of Saddam Hussein, eventually leading to the Gulf War.

Pakistan is re-admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations after having restored democracy for the first time since 1972.

A massacre is carried out by an Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka killing 64 ethnic Tamil civilians.

Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, crashes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport killing 137.

The Helsinki Metro, the first rapid transit system of Finland, is opened to the general public.

A bomb explodes at the railway station in Bologna, Italy, killing 85 people and wounding more than 200.

A flash fire kills 50 people at the Summerland amusement centre at Douglas, Isle of Man.