July 31, 1981 (Friday)
- 1981 Major League Baseball strike: In New York, federal mediator Kenneth Moffett announced that the major league owners and players had agreed to end the strike. The All-Star game, set for August 9 in Cleveland, would mark the return of baseball, and regularly scheduled games would resume on August 10.
- Died: General Omar Torrijos, 52, military leader of Panama, and head of state from 1972-1978. Torrijos and six other people had taken off from Penonomé in a storm, bound for Coclesito, and the plane crashed into the Cerro Julio mountain.
- Died: Joe Gqabi (born 1929), African National Congress representative in Zimbabwe and former member of the Umkhonto we Sizwe, was assassinated as he backed out of his driveway in Harare; decades later one of the Districts of South Africa was named in his honour.
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Famous quotes containing the word july:
“People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn’t buy vanilla ice cream. Except on July Fourth. Other days he had to be satisfied with chocolate.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)