July 31, 1941 – Under instructions from Adolph Hitler, Nazi official Hermann Göring orders SS General Reinhard Heydrich 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.”   This “final solution” (Die Endlösung) was the sytematic genocide of European Jewry during World War Two.  Though hundreds of thousands of Jews had already perished due to the efforts of Death Squads and in mass pogroms, the “final solution” would lead to the extermination of nearly SIX MILLION Jews or 63% of the European Jewish population.  It really is no wonder these actions are named forevermore the “Holocaust” (Shoah).

July 31, 2007 – Operation Banner, the British Armed Forces occupation and operations in Northern Ireland which began in August 1969 (the longest British military operation ever) comes to an end.