1946

JUL31

Marilyn Monroe, then known as Norma Jean Dougherty, signs her first movie contract, with Twentieth-Century Fox. She will be paid $150 a week.

Source: history.com

1498 – Christopher Columbus, on his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, arrived at the island of Trinidad.

1790 – The first U.S. patent was issued to Samuel Hopkins for his process for making potash and pearl ashes. The substance was used in fertilizer.

1792 – The cornerstone of the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, PA, was laid. It was the first building to be used only as a U.S. government building.

1919 – Germany’s Weimar Constitution was adopted.

1928 – MGM’s Leo the lion roared for the first time. He introduced MGM’s first talking picture, “White Shadows on the South Seas.”

1932 – Enzo Ferrari retired from racing. In 1950 he launched a series of cars under his name.

1945 – Pierre Laval of France surrendered to Americans in Austria.

1948 – U.S. President Truman helped dedicate New York International Airport (later John F. Kennedy International Airport) at Idlewild Field.

1955 – Marilyn Bell of Toronto, Canada, at age 17, became the youngest person to swim the English Channel.

1959 – The Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) was founded. The group is known for being an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization.

1961 – The first tie in All-Star Game major league baseball history was recorded when it was stopped in the 9th inning due to rain at Boston’s Fenway Park.

1964 – The American space probe Ranger 7 transmitted pictures of the moon’s surface. 

1971 – Men rode in a vehicle on the moon for the first time in a lunar rover vehicle (LRV).

1981 – The seven-week baseball players’ strike came to an end when the players and owners agreed on the issue of free agent compensation.

1982 – Yugoslavia imposed a six-month freeze on prices.

1989 – A pro-Iranian group in Lebanon released a videotape reportedly showing the hanged body of American hostage William R. Higgins.

1989 – The Game Boy handheld video game device was released in the U.S.

1991 – U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

1995 – The Walt Disney Company agreed to acquire Capital Cities/ABC in a $19 billion deal.
Disney movies, music and books

1999 – The spacecraft Lunar Prospect crashed into the moon. It was a mission to detect frozen water on the moon’s surface. The craft had been launched on January 6, 1998. 

2007 – The iTunes Music Store reached 2 million feature length films sold.

The SAVE program was created in 1986-1987, and was designed only to verify immigration status for public benefits, not citizenship, and not elections

SAVE

• does not show citizenship
• mislabels naturalized citizens
• produces inaccurate “noncitizen” lists
• creates legal liability
• triggers lawsuits
• causes wrongful purges
• is not designed for elections

The majority of states avoid it now, but there was a time in 2019 when Texas tried to use SAVE to flag noncitizens on voter rolls again. Unfortunately, thousands were naturalized citizens. There were lawsuits, and found that the list was so inaccurate that Texas had to withdraw it, and the Sec of State at the time resigned.

However, there was a notable incident in Texas in 2019 when the state attempted to use the program to flag noncitizens on voter rolls. Unfortunately, this effort resulted in the misidentification of thousands of naturalized citizens as noncitizens. The legal challenges that followed revealed the significant inaccuracies in the list, leading Texas to withdraw it and prompting the resignation of the Secretary of State at that time.

This didn’t create a policy change; it exposed the flaw.

This incident did not lead to a policy change; it exposed serious flaws in the program. In the 2000s, several states considered accessing SAVE and signing data-sharing agreements. DHS documentation started referencing SAVE as a verification tool for elections in various memos, not publicly.

In 2024-2025, a federal judge allowed access to SAVE and the voter rolls in Florida, Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio, which became politically charged.

Today, the same judge recognized the conflict but allowed four states, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio, to have access to the SAVE system. This decision contradicted federal rulings and continues to lack the required notification process. While voters were being flagged quietly, public awareness is starting to explode.

I remember being asked about my name, spoken to in Spanish, being called into HR in the 80s and asked my country of origin. That same mindset — asking the wrong question to the wrong people — is exactly why SAVE is dangerous today.

SAVE cannot verify citizenship and does not contain citizenship data — which is why using it to purge voter rolls is fundamentally flawed.

To be sure, this blurb was due to the Democracy Docket’s great job of exposing the truth in the news

Sources: Democracy Docket, LWV, Brennan Center, ai and the Internet articles

Ranger 7, an unmanned U.S. lunar probe, takes the first close-up images of the moon—4,308 in total—before it impacts with the lunar surface northwest of the Sea of Clouds. The images were 1,000 times as clear as anything ever seen through earth-bound telescopes.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had attempted a similar mission earlier in the year—Ranger 6—but the probe’s cameras had failed as it descended to the lunar surface. Ranger 7, launched from Earth on July 28, successfully activated its cameras 17 minutes, or 1,300 miles, before impact and began beaming the images back to NASA’s receiving station in California. The pictures showed that the lunar surface was not excessively dusty or otherwise treacherous to a potential spacecraft landing, thus lending encouragement to the NASA plan to send astronauts to the moon

For the complete article: history.com

On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law legislation that established the Medicare and Medicaid programs. For 50 years, these programs have been protecting the health and well-being of millions of American families, saving lives, and improving the economic security of our nation.

 

CMS’ program history
Medicare & Medicaid

On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the bill that led to the Medicare and Medicaid. The original Medicare program included Part A (Hospital Insurance) and Part B (Medical Insurance). Today these 2 parts are called “Original Medicare.” Over the years, Congress has made changes to Medicare:

• More people have become eligible.
  For example, in 1972, Medicare was expanded to cover the disabled, people with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) requiring dialysis or kidney transplant, and people 65 or older that select Medicare coverage.
  More benefits, like prescription drug coverage, have been offered.
  At first, Medicaid gave medical insurance to people getting cash assistance. Today, a much larger group is covered:
  Low-income families
  Pregnant women
  People of all ages with disabilities
  People who need long-term care
  States can tailor their Medicaid programs to best serve the people in their state, so there’s a wide variation in the services offered.
  Medicare Part D Prescription Drug benefit
  The Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) made the biggest changes to the Medicare in the program in 38 years. Under the MMA, private health plans approved by Medicare became known as Medicare Advantage Plans. These plans are sometimes called “Part C” or “MA Plans.”
  The MMA also expanded Medicare to include an optional prescription drug benefit, “Part D,” which went into effect in 2006.
  Children’s Health Insurance Program
  The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was created in 1997 to give health insurance and preventive care to nearly 11 million, or 1 in 7, uninsured American children. Many of these children came from uninsured working families that earned too much to be eligible for Medicaid. All 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories have CHIP plans.
  Affordable Care Act
  The 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) brought the Health Insurance Marketplace, a single place where consumers can apply for and enroll in private health insurance plans. It also made new ways for us to design and test how to pay for and deliver health care. Medicare and Medicaid have also been better coordinated to make sure people who have Medicare and Medicaid can get quality services.
  50th Anniversary – Medicare & Medicaid Event: 50 Years, Millions Of Healthier Lives

cms.gov