July 31 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on July 31

• J. K. Rowling (1965)

  British author of the Harry Potter series, who gave her fictional character the same July 31 birthday as her own.

• Milton Friedman (1912)

  American economist and 1976 Nobel laureate, a leading advocate of free-market monetarist economic policy.

• Wesley Snipes (1962)

  American actor known for the Blade film series.

• Evonne Goolagong (1951)

  Australian tennis player and former world No. 1, winner of multiple Grand Slam singles titles.

This Day in History

• 1498 — Christopher Columbus sighted the island of Trinidad during his third voyage to the Americas.

• 1919 — Germany's National Assembly adopted the Weimar Constitution in the city of Weimar, establishing the republic that governed Germany until 1933.

• 1954 — An Italian expedition led by Ardito Desio achieved the first confirmed ascent of K2, the world's second-highest mountain, with climbers Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni reaching the summit.

• 1790 — The first U.S. patent was issued, to Samuel Hopkins for an improved method of making potash, an industrial chemical used in soap and fertilizer production, under the newly enacted Patent Act signed by President Washington.

What July 31 Says About You

J. K. Rowling gave Harry Potter the same birthday she has herself, July 31, a small deliberate choice that turned her own actual birth date, 1965, into one of the most widely known fictional birthdays in modern publishing — millions of readers now know July 31 primarily as Harry's birthday without necessarily realizing it's also hers. It's a fitting bit of trivia for a date whose real history is full of things quietly becoming much bigger than their starting point suggested. The Weimar Constitution, adopted by Germany's National Assembly on this date in 1919, established what was, on paper, one of the most progressive democratic constitutions of its era, with broad civil liberties and proportional representation — yet the republic it created struggled against economic crises and political extremism for fourteen years before collapsing in 1933, a sobering reminder that a well-designed founding document doesn't guarantee a stable outcome. K2's first confirmed ascent, achieved by an Italian expedition on this date in 1954, involved a mountain widely considered more technically dangerous than Everest despite being slightly shorter — a peak that has killed roughly one climber for every four who've reached its summit throughout mountaineering history, making the 1954 achievement a genuinely narrow, hard-won success rather than a routine one. Milton Friedman, born on this date in 1912, spent his career arguing that large, centrally planned systems tended to produce worse outcomes than smaller, more decentralized ones responding to individual incentives — an economic philosophy that, whatever one makes of its politics, shares an odd structural echo with K2's brutal indifference to even the most carefully planned large expeditions. Leo closes out the month on this date, its traditional ambition and strong personal signature evident in Evonne Goolagong's groundbreaking tennis career as one of the first prominent Indigenous Australian athletes to reach the top of a major international sport, and in Rowling's own decision to leave her personal mark directly inside the fictional world she created. The 31st reduces in numerology to day number 4, linked to structure and foundational groundwork — a fitting match for the Weimar Constitution's ambitious institutional design, even given its ultimate fragility. Christopher Columbus's sighting of Trinidad on this date in 1498, during his third and increasingly troubled voyage, adds an older historical layer to a date whose real theme is ambitious founding moments whose long-term outcomes remained genuinely uncertain. July's ruby birthstone and larkspur birth flower close out the month exactly as they opened it, thirty-one days earlier. The first U.S. patent, granted on this date in 1790 to Samuel Hopkins for an improved potash-making process, is easy to overlook next to the date's grander founding moments, but it quietly launched the entire American patent system that Edison, the Wright brothers, and generations of later inventors would go on to rely on.