On This Day....

[Ed The King]

711 or 712 – Umayyad conquest of Hispania: Battle of Guadalete – Umayyad forces under Tariq ibn Ziyad defeat the Visigoths led by King Roderic.
1333 – Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Halidon Hill – The English win a decisive victory over the Scots.
1544 – Italian War of 1542: The Siege of Boulogne begins.
1545 – The Tudor warship Mary Rose sinks off Portsmouth.
1553 – Lady Jane Grey is replaced by Mary I of England as Queen of England after having that title for just nine days.
1588 – Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines – The Spanish Armada sighted in the English Channel.
1692 – Salem Witch Trials: Five women are hanged for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.
1701 – Representatives of the Iroquois Confederacy signed the Nanfan Treaty, ceding a large territory north of the Ohio River to England.
1760 – The formal request to found the later city of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico is filed by its founders.
1832 – The British Medical Association was founded as the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association by Sir Charles Hastings at a meeting in the Board Room of the Worcester Infirmary.
1843 – Brunel's steamship the SS Great Britain is launched, becoming the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull or screw propeller and also becoming the largest vessel afloat in the world.
1848 – Women's rights: The two day Women's Rights Convention opens in Seneca Falls, New York and the "Bloomers" are introduced at the feminist convention.
1863 – American Civil War: Morgan's Raid – At Buffington Island in Ohio, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan's raid into the north is mostly thwarted when a large group of his men are captured while trying to escape across the Ohio River.
1864 – Taiping Rebellion: Third Battle of Nanking the Qing Dynasty finally defeats the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
1870 – Franco-Prussian War: France declares war on Prussia.
1879 – Doc Holliday kills for the first time after a man shoots up his New Mexico saloon.
1912 – A meteorite with an estimated mass of 190 kg explodes over the town of Holbrook in Navajo County, Arizona causing approximately 16,000 pieces of debris to rain down on the town.
1916 – World War I: Battle of Fromelles – British and Australian troops attack German trenches in a prelude to the Battle of the Somme.
1919 – Following Peace Day celebrations marking the end of World War I, ex-servicemen rioted and burnt down Luton Town Hall.
1940 – World War II: Battle of Cape Spada – The Royal Navy and the Regia Marina clash; the Italian light cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni sinks, with 121 casualties.
1940 – World War II: Army order 112 forms the Intelligence Corps of the British Army.
1942 – World War II: Battle of the Atlantic – German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz orders the last U-boats to withdraw from their United States Atlantic coast positions in response to the effective American convoy system.
1947 – Prime minister of shadow Burma government, Bogyoke Aung San and 6 of his cabinet and 2 non-cabinet members are assassinated by Galon U Saw, which resulted in the political chaos in the country lasting until now.
1963 – Joe Walker flies a North American X-15 to a record altitude of 106,010 metres (347,800 feet) on X-15 Flight 90. Exceeding an altitude of 100 km, this flight qualifies as a human spaceflight under international convention.
1964 – Vietnam War: At a rally in Saigon, South Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Khanh calls for expanding the war into North Vietnam.
1976 – Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal is created.
1979 – The Sandinista rebels overthrow the government of the Somoza family in Nicaragua.
1983 – The first three-dimensional reconstruction of a human head in a CT is published.
1985 – The Val di Stava Dam collapse killing 268 people in Val di Stava, Italy.
1989 – United Airlines flight 232 crashes in Sioux City, Iowa killing 112 of the 296 passengers.
1992 – Anti-Mafia Judge Paolo Borsellino is killed by a Mafia car bomb in Palermo, together with five police officers.

[Ed The King]

July 20th  WOW Lots of history today.

70 – Siege of Jerusalem: Titus, son of emperor Vespasian, storms the Fortress of Antonia north of the Temple Mount. The Roman army is drawn into street fights with the Zealots.

911 – Rollo lays siege to Chartres.
1304 – Wars of Scottish Independence: Fall of Stirling Castle – King Edward I of England takes the stronghold using the War Wolf.
1402 – Ottoman-Timurid Wars: Battle of Ankara – Timur, ruler of Timurid Empire, defeats forces of the Ottoman Empire sultan Bayezid I.
1656 – Swedish forces under the command of King Charles X Gustav defeat the forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the Battle of Warsaw.
1738 – North America: French explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de la Vérendrye reaches the western shore of Lake Michigan.

1810 – Citizens of Bogotá, New Granada declare independence from Spain.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Peachtree Creek – Near Atlanta, Georgia, Confederate forces led by General John Bell Hood unsuccessfully attack Union troops under General William T. Sherman.
1866 – Austro-Prussian War: Battle of Lissa – The Austrian Navy , led by Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff, defeats the Italian Navy near the island of Vis in the Adriatic Sea.
1871 – British Columbia joins the confederation of Canada.

1877 – Rioting in Baltimore, Maryland by Baltimore and Ohio Railroad workers is put down by the state militia, resulting in nine deaths.
1881 – Indian Wars:Sioux Chief Sitting Bull leads the last of his fugitive people in surrender to United States troops at Fort Buford, North Dakota

1885 – The Football Association legalises professionalism in football under pressure from the British Football Association.
1894 – The troops sent by Grover Cleveland to Chicago to end the Pullman Strike are recalled.
1898 – Spanish-American War: A boiler explodes on the USS Iowa off the coast of Santiago de Cuba.
1903 – Ford Motor Company ships its first car.
1907 – A train wreck on the Pere Marquette Railroad near Salem, Michigan kills thirty and injures seventy.
1916 – World War I: In Armenia, Russian troops capture Gumiskhanek.
1917 – World War I: The Corfu Declaration, which leads to the creation of the post-war Kingdom of Yugoslavia, is signed by the Yugoslav Committee and Kingdom of Serbia.
1918 – World War I: German troops cross the Marne.
1921 – Air mail service begins between New York City and San Francisco.
1921 – Congresswoman Alice Mary Robertson became the first woman to preside over the US House of Representatives.
1922 – The League of Nations awards mandates of Togoland to France and Tanganyika to the United Kingdom.
1924 – Teheran, Persia comes under martial law after the American vice-consul, Robert Imbrie, is killed by a religious mob enraged by rumors he had poisoned a fountain and killed several people.
1926 – A convention of the Southern Methodist Church votes to allow women to become ministers.
1928 – The government of Hungary issues a decree ordering Gypsies to end their nomadic ways, settle permanently in one place, and subject themselves to the same laws and taxes as other Hungarians.
1929 – Soviet troops attempt to cross the Amur River into Manchuria near Blagoveschensk as tensions mount between the Soviet Union and the Republic of China.
1932 – In Washington, D.C., police fire tear gas on World War I veterans part of the Bonus Expeditionary Force who attempt to march to the White House.
1932 – Crowds in the capitals of Bolivia and Paraguay demand their governments declare war on the other after fighting on their border.
1933 – Vice-Chancellor of Germany Franz von Papen and Vatican Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli sign a concordat on behalf of their respective nations.
1933 – In London, 500,000 march against anti-Semitism.
1933 – Germany: Two-hundred Jewish merchants are arrested in Nuremberg and paraded through the streets.
1934 – Labor unrest in the U.S., as police in Minneapolis fire upon striking truck drivers, during the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934, killing two and wounding sixty-seven. 1934 West Coast waterfront strike: In Seattle police fire tear gas on and club 2,000 striking longshoremen. The governor of Oregon calls out the National Guard to break a strike on the Portland docks.
1935 – Switzerland: A Royal Dutch Airlines plane en route from Milan to Frankfurt crashes into a Swiss mountain, killing thirteen.
1936 – The Montreux Convention is signed in Switzerland, authorizing Turkey to fortify the Dardanelles and Bosphorus but guaranteeing free passage to ships of all nations in peacetime.
1938 – The United States Department of Justice files suit in New York City against the motion picture industry charging violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act in regards to the studio system. The case would eventually result in a break-up of the industry in 1948.
1940 – Denmark leaves the League of Nations.
1940 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Hatch Act of 1939, limiting political activity by Federal government employees.
1941 – Soviet leader Joseph Stalin consolidates the Commissariats of Home Affairs and National Security to form the NKVD and names Lavrenti Beria its chief.
1942 – World War II: The first unit of the Women's Army Corps begins training in Des Moines, Iowa.
1944 – World War II: Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt (known as the 20 July plot) led by German Army Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.
1944 – Franklin D. Roosevelt wins the Democratic Party nomination for the fourth and final time at the 1944 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.
1944 – Fifty are hurt in rioting in front of the presidential palace in Mexico City.
1945 – The US Congress approves the Bretton Woods Agreement.
1946 – World War II: The US Congress's Pearl Harbor Committee says Franklin D. Roosevelt is completely blameless for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and calls for a unified command structure in the armed forces.
1947 – Police in Burma arrest former Prime Minister U Saw and 19 others on charges of assassinating Prime Minister U Aung San and seven members of his cabinet.
1947 – The Viceroy of India says the people of the North-West Frontier Province overwhelmingly voted the previous day to join Pakistan rather than India.
1948 – U.S. President Harry S. Truman issues a peacetime military draft in the United States amid increasing tensions with the Soviet Union.
1948 – In New York City, twelve leaders of the Communist Party USA are indicted under the Smith Act including William Z. Foster and Gus Hall.
1949 – Israel and Syria sign a truce to end their nineteen-month war.
1950 – Cold War: In Philadelphia, Harry Gold pleads guilty to spying for the Soviet Union by passing secrets from atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs.
1951 – King Abdullah I of Jordan is assassinated by a Palestinian while attending Friday prayers in Jerusalem.
1953 – The United Nations Economic and Social Council votes to make UNICEF a permanent agency.
1954 – Germany: Otto John, head of West Germany's secret service, defects to East Germany.
1954 – At Geneva, Switzerland, an armistice is signed that ends fighting in Vietnam and divides the country along the 17th parallel.
1959 – The Organization for European Economic Cooperation admits Spain.
1960 – Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) elects Sirimavo Bandaranaike Prime Minister, the world's first elected female head of government.
1960 – The Polaris missile is successfully launched from a submarine, the USS George Washington, for the first time.
1960 – Belgium defends its intervention in the Congo to the United Nations Security Council while the government of the Congo appeals to the Soviet Union to send troops to push back the Belgians. The governments of the United States and France and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization warn the Soviets to stay out of the dispute.
1960 – The head of the Physics Department at the Israel Institute of Technology, Kurt Sitte, is arrested for espionage.
1961 – French military forces break the Tunisian siege of Bizerte.
1964 – Vietnam War: Viet Cong forces attack the capital of Dinh Tuong Province, Cai Be, killing 11 South Vietnamese military personnel and 40 civilians (30 of which are children).
1964 – The National Movement of the Revolution is instituted as the sole legal political party in the Republic of Congo.
1965 – Turkish prime minister Suat Hayri Urguplu returns from a visit to Moscow and announces the Soviet Union will provide aid to his country.
1968 – Special Olympics founded.
1969 – Apollo Program: Apollo 11 successfully lands on the Moon at 20:17 UTC on July 20.
1969 – A cease fire is announced between Honduras and El Salvador, 6 days after the beginning of the "Football War"
1971 – The Soviet Union says it will support the People's Republic of China's admission to the United Nations
1973 – The US Senate passes the War Powers Act.
1973 – Vietnam War: In testimony by Assistant Secretary of Defense Jerry Friedheim to the US Senate Committee on Armed Services, the US Defense Department admits it lied to US Congress about bombing Cambodia .
1973 – Palestianian resistance hijack a Japan Airlines jet en route from Amsterdam to Japan and force it down in Dubai.
1973 – First coast-to-coast black-owned and operated radio network: The National Black Network (NBN) begins operations.
1974 – Turkish occupation of Cyprus: Forces from Turkey invade Cyprus after a "coup d' etat", organised by the dictator of Greece, against president Makarios. NATO's Council praises the United States and the United Kingdom for attempts to settle the dispute. Syria and Egypt put their militaries on alert.
1975 – India expels three reporters from The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and Newsweek because they refused to sign a pledge to abide by government censorship.
1976 – The Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars.
1976 – Vietnam War: The U.S. military completes its troop withdrawal from Thailand.
1976 – Hank Aaron hits his 755th home run, the final home run of his career.
1977 – Johnstown is hit by a flash flood that kills eighty and causes $350 million in damage.
1977 – The Central Intelligence Agency releases documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind control experiments.
1980 – The United Nations Security Council votes 14-0 that member states should not recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
1982 – Hyde Park and Regents Park bombings: The Provisional IRA detonates two bombs in Hyde Park and Regents Park in central London, killing eight soldiers, wounding forty-seven people, and leading to the deaths of seven horses.
1983 – The Israeli cabinet votes to withdraw troops from Beirut but to remain in southern Lebanon.
1984 – Officials of the Miss America pageant ask Vanessa Lynn Williams to quit after Penthouse publishes nude photos of her.
1985 – The government of Aruba passes legislation to secede from the Netherlands Antilles.
1986 – In South Africa, police fire tear gas into a church service for families of those held under the government's emergency decrees.
1987 – UN Security Council Resolution 598, condemning the Iran–Iraq War and demanding cease-fire, is unanimously adopted.
1989 – Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's show opens at Washington, D.C.'s Project for the Arts after the Smithsonian Institution's Corcoran Gallery cancels it.
1989 – Burma's ruling junta puts opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.
1992 – Václav Havel resigns as president of Czechoslovakia.
1992 – The first post-Soviet monetary reform in Latvia ended, as the Soviet rouble lost its status as legal tender.
1994 – Israel's Shimon Peres visits Jordan, the highest ranking Israeli official to do so
1994 – Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's Fragment Q1 hits Jupiter.
1996 – In Spain, an ETA bomb at Reus Airport injures 53
1998 – Two hundred aid workers from CARE International, Doctors Without Borders and other aid groups leave Afghanistan on orders of the Taliban.
1999 – Falun Gong is banned in the People's Republic of China, and a large scale crackdown of the practice is launched.
1999 – Recovery, from 4.5 km down in the Atlantic, of the Liberty Bell 7 space capsule, which sank after Virgil Grissom's July 21, 1961 suborbital flight.
2000 – The leaders of Salt Lake City's bid to win the 2002 Winter Olympics are indicted by a federal grand jury for bribery, fraud, and racketeering.
2000 – In Zimbabwe, Parliament opens its new session and seats opposition members for the first time in a decade.
2000 – Carlos the Jackal sues France in the European Court of Human Rights for allegedly torturing him.
2001 – The London Stock Exchange Group plc which owns the London Stock Exchange, goes public.
2001 – Italy: The 27th Annual G8 summit opens in Genoa. An Italian protester in Genoa, Carlo Giuliani, is shot by police.
2002 – South America: A fire in a discotheque in Lima, Peru kills over twenty-five.
2003 – France: Sixteen people are injured after two bombs explode outside a tax office in Nice.
2005 – Canada becomes the fourth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage, after the bill C-38 receives its Royal Assent.

2006 – Ethiopian invasion of Somalia Ethiopian troops enter Somalian territory.

[Ed The King]

July 21st

356 BC – Herostratus sets fire to the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
285 – Diocletian appoints Maximian as Caesar and co-ruler.
365 – A tsunami devastates the city of Alexandria, Egypt. The tsunami is caused by an earthquake estimated to be 8.0 on the Richter Scale. 5,000 people perished in the Alexandria, and 45,000 more died outside of the city.
1403 – Battle of Shrewsbury: King Henry IV of England defeats rebels to the north of the county town of Shropshire, England.
1545 – The first landing of French troops on the coast of the Isle of Wight during the French invasion of the Isle of Wight occurs.
1568 – Eighty Years' War: Battle of Jemmingen – Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva defeats Louis of Nassau.
1718 – The Treaty of Passarowitz between the Ottoman Empire, Austria and the Republic of Venice is signed.
1774 – Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774: Russia and the Ottoman Empire sign the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji ending the war.
1831 – Inauguration of Léopold I of Belgium, first king of the Belgians.
1861 – American Civil War: First Battle of Bull Run – at Manassas Junction, Virginia, the first major battle of the war begins and ends in a victory for the Confederate army.
1865 – In the market square of Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok shoots and kills Davis Tutt in what is regarded as the first true western showdown.
1873 – At Adair, Iowa, Jesse James and the James-Younger gang pull off the first successful train robbery in the American Old West.
1877 – After rioting by Baltimore and Ohio Railroad workers and the deaths of nine rail workers at the hands of the Maryland militia, workers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania stage a sympathy strike that is met with an assault by the state militia.
1904 – Louis Rigolly, a Frenchman, becomes the first man to break the 100 mph (161 km/h) barrier on land. He drove a 15-liter Gobron-Brille in Ostend, Belgium.
1918 – U-156 shells Nauset Beach, in Orleans, Massachusetts. This is the first time that the United States is shelled since the Mexican-American War.
1919 – The dirigible Wingfoot Air Express crashes into the Illinois Trust and Savings Building in Chicago, killing 12 people.
1925 – Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John T. Scopes is found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $100.
1925 – Sir Malcolm Campbell becomes the first man to break the 150 mph (241 km/h) land barrier at Pendine Sands in Wales. He drove a Sunbeam to a two-way average of 150.33 mph (242 km/h).
1944 – World War II: Battle of Guam – American troops land on Guam starting the battle. It would end on August 10.
1944 – World War II: Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and fellow conspirators are executed in Berlin, Germany for the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
1949 – The United States Senate ratifies the North Atlantic Treaty.
1954 – First Indochina War: The Geneva Conference partitions Vietnam into North Vietnam and South Vietnam.
1959 – Elijah Jerry "Pumpsie" Green becomes the first African-American to play for the Boston Red Sox, the last team to integrate. He came in as a pinch runner for Vic Wertz and stayed in as shortstop in a 2-1 loss to the Chicago White Sox.
1960 – Sirimavo Bandaranaike is elected prime minister of Sri Lanka and becomes the first woman prime minister in the world.
1961 – Mercury program: Mercury-Redstone 4 Mission – Gus Grissom piloting Liberty Bell 7 becomes the second American to go into space (in a suborbital mission).
1964 – Singapore Race Riot – every year since then, Racial Harmony Day is celebrated on this day.
1969 – Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin become the first men to walk on the Moon, during the Apollo 11 mission.
1970 – After 11 years of construction, the Aswan High Dam in Egypt is completed.
1972 – Bloody Friday bombing by the Provisional Irish Republican Army around Belfast, Northern Ireland – 22 bomb explosions, 9 people killed and 130 people seriously injured.
1973 – In the Lillehammer affair in Norway, Israeli Mossad agents kill a waiter whom they mistakenly thought was involved in 1972's Munich Olympics Massacre.
1976 – Christopher Ewart-Biggs British ambassador to the Republic of Ireland is assassinated by the Provisional IRA.
1977 – The start of a four day long Libyan-Egyptian War takes place.
1983 – The world's lowest temperature is recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica at −89.2°C (−129°F).
1994 – Tony Blair is declared the winner of the leadership election of the British Labour Party, paving the way for him to become Prime Minister in 1997.
1995 – Third Taiwan Strait Crisis: The People's Liberation Army begins firing missiles into the waters north of Taiwan.
1997 – The fully restored USS Constitution (aka "Old Ironsides") celebrates her 200th birthday by setting sail for the first time in 116 years.
2004 – The United Kingdom government publishes Delivering Security in a Changing World, a paper detailing wide-ranging reform of the country's armed forces.
2005 – Four terrorist bombings, occurring exactly two weeks after the similar July 7 bombings, target London's public transportation system. All four bombs fail to detonate and all four suspected suicide bombers are captured and later convicted and imprisoned for long terms.
2007 – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last installment of the international record breaking series, is released.
2008 – Bosnian-Serb war criminal Radovan Karadžić is arrested in Serbia and is indicted by the UN's ICTY tribunal.

[Ed The King]

July 22nd

Events
838 – Battle of Anzen: the Byzantine emperor Theophilos suffers a heavy defeat by the Abbasids.
1099 – First Crusade: Godfrey of Bouillon is elected the first Defender of the Holy Sepulchre of The Kingdom of Jerusalem.
1298 – Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Falkirk – King Edward I of England and his longbowmen defeat William Wallace and his Scottish schiltrons outside the town of Falkirk.
1456 – Ottoman Wars in Europe: Siege of Belgrade – John Hunyadi, Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary, defeats Mehmet II of the Ottoman Empire
1484 – Battle of Lochmaben Fair – A 500-man raiding party led by Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany and James Douglas, 9th Earl of Douglas are defeated by Scots forces loyal to Albany's brother James III of Scotland; Douglas is captured.
1499 – Battle of Dornach – The Swiss decisively defeat the Imperial army of Emperor Maximilian I.
1587 – Colony of Roanoke: a second group of English settlers arrives on Roanoke Island off North Carolina to re-establish the deserted colony.
1686 – Albany, New York is formally chartered as a municipality by Governor Thomas Dongan.
1793 – Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Pacific Ocean becoming the first Euro-American to complete a transcontinental crossing of Canada.
1796 – Surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company name an area in Ohio "Cleveland" after Gen. Moses Cleaveland, the superintendent of the surveying party.
1805 – Napoleonic Wars: War of the Third Coalition – Battle of Cape Finisterre – an inconclusive naval action is fought between a combined French and Spanish fleet under Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve of Spain and a British fleet under Admiral Robert Calder.
1812 – Napoleonic Wars: Peninsular War – Battle of Salamanca – British forces led by Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington) defeat French troops near Salamanca, Spain.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Atlanta – outside Atlanta, Georgia, Confederate General John Bell Hood leads an unsuccessful attack on Union troops under General William T. Sherman on Bald Hill.
1894 – The first ever motorized racing event is held in France between the cities of Paris and Rouen. The race is won by Comte Jules-Albert de Dion.
1916 – In San Francisco, California, a bomb explodes on Market Street during a Preparedness Day parade killing 10 and injuring 40.
1933 – Wiley Post becomes the first person to fly solo around the world traveling 15,596 miles (25,099 km) in 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes.
1934 – Outside Chicago's Biograph Theater, "Public Enemy No. 1" John Dillinger is mortally wounded by FBI agents.
1937 – New Deal: the United States Senate votes down President Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court of the United States.
1942 – The United States government begins compulsory civilian gasoline rationing due to the wartime demands.
1942 – Holocaust: the systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto begins.
1943 – World War II: Allied forces capture the Italian city of Palermo.
1944 – The Polish Committee of National Liberation publishes its manifesto, starting the period of Communist rule in Poland
1946 – King David Hotel bombing: a Zionist underground organisation, the Irgun, bombs the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, site of the civil administration and military headquarters for Mandate Palestine, resulting in 91 deaths.
1951 – Dezik (Дезик) and Tsygan (Цыган, "Gypsy") are the first dogs to make a sub-orbital flight.
1962 – Mariner program: Mariner 1 spacecraft flies erratically several minutes after launch and has to be destroyed.
1976 – Japan completes its last reparation to the Philippines for war crimes committed during the imperial Japan's conquest of the country in the Second World War
1977 – Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping is restored to power.
1983 – Martial law in Poland is officially revoked.
1992 – Near Medellín, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar escapes from his luxury prison fearing extradition to the United States.
1993 – Great Flood of 1993: levees near Kaskaskia, Illinois rupture, forcing the entire town to evacuate by barges operated by the Army Corps of Engineers.
1997 – The second Blue Water Bridge opens between Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario.
2002 – Israel kills Salah Shahade, the Commander-in-Chief of Hamas's military arm, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
2003 – Members of 101st Airborne of the United States, aided by Special Forces, attack a compound in Iraq, killing Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay, along with Mustapha Hussein, Qusay's 14-year old son, and a bodyguard.
2005 – Jean Charles de Menezes is killed by police as the hunt begins for the London Bombers responsible for the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the 21 July 2005 London bombings.

[Ed The King]

July 23rd

1632 – Three hundred colonists bound for New France depart from Dieppe, France.
1793 – Prussia re-conquers Mainz from France.
1829 – In the United States, William Austin Burt patents the typographer, a precursor to the typewriter.
1833 – Cornerstones are laid for the construction of the Kirtland Temple in Kirtland, Ohio.
1840 – The Province of Canada is created by the Act of Union.
1862 – American Civil War: Henry W. Halleck takes command of the Union Army.
1874 – Aires de Ornelas e Vasconcelos is appointed the Archbishop of the Portuguese colonial enclave of Goa.
1881 – The Federation Internationale de Gymnastique, the world's oldest international sport federation, is founded.
1881 – The Boundary treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina is signed in Buenos Aires.
1903 – The Ford Motor Company sells its first car.
1914 – Austria-Hungary issues an ultimatum to Serbia demanding Serbia to allow the Austrians to determine who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Serbia will reject those demands and Austria will declare war on July 28.
1926 – Fox Film buys the patents of the Movietone sound system for recording sound onto film.
1929 – The Fascist government in Italy bans the use of foreign words.
1936 – In Catalonia, Spain, the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia is founded through the merger of Socialist and Communist parties.
1940 – The United States' Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles issues a declaration on the U.S. non-recognition policy of the Soviet annexation and incorporation of three Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
1942 – The Holocaust: the Treblinka extermination camp is opened.
1942 – World War II: Operation Edelweiss begins.
1945 – The post-war legal processes against Philippe Pétain begin.
1952 – The European Coal and Steel community is established.
1952 – General Muhammad Naguib leads the Free Officers Movement (formed by Gamal Abdel Nasser, the real power behind the coup) in overthrowing King Farouk of Egypt.
1956 – The Loi Cadre is passed by the French Republic in order to order French overseas territory affairs.
1961 – The Sandinista National Liberation Front is founded in Nicaragua.
1962 – Telstar relays the first publicly transmitted, live trans-Atlantic television program, featuring Walter Cronkite.
1962 – The International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos is signed.
1967 – 12th Street Riot: in Detroit, Michigan, one of the worst riots in United States history begins on 12th Street in the predominantly African American inner city. It will leave 43 killed, 342 injured and 1,400 buildings burned.
1968 – Glenville Shootout: in Cleveland, Ohio, a violent shootout between a Black Militant organization led by Ahmed Evans and the Cleveland Police Department occurs. During the shootout, a riot begins and lasts for five days.
1968 – The only successful hijacking of an El Al aircraft takes place when a Boeing 707 carrying 10 crew and 38 passengers is taken over by three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The aircraft was en route from Rome, Italy, to Lod, Israel.
1970 – Qaboos ibn Sa’id becomes Sultan of Oman after overthrowing his father, Sa’id ibn Taimur initiating massive reforms ;modernisation programs and end to a decade long civil war.
1972 – The United States launch Landsat 1, the first Earth-resources satellite.
1982 – The International Whaling Commission decides to end commercial whaling by 1985-86.
1983 – The Sri Lankan Civil War begins with the killing of 13 Sri Lanka Army soldiers by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Terrorist group. In the subsequent riots of Black July, about 1,000 Tamils are slaughtered, some 400,000 Tamils flee to neighbouring Tamil Nadu, India and many find refuge in Europe and Canada.
1983 – Gimli Glider: Air Canada Flight 143 runs out of fuel and makes a deadstick landing at Gimli, Manitoba.
1984 – Vanessa Williams becomes the first Miss America to resign when she surrenders her crown after nude photos of her appeared in Penthouse magazine.
1986 – In London, Prince Andrew, Duke of York marries Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey.
1988 – General Ne Win, effective ruler of Burma since 1962, resigns after pro-democracy protests.
1992 – A Vatican commission, led by Joseph Ratzinger, establishes that it is necessary to limit rights of homosexual people and non-married couples.
1992 – Abkhazia declares independence from Georgia.
1995 – Comet Hale-Bopp is discovered; it will become visible to the naked eye nearly a year later.
1997 – Digital Equipment Company files antitrust charges against chipmaker Intel.
1999 – Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Al-Hassan is crowned King Mohammed VI of Morocco on the death of his father.
1999 – ANA Flight 61 is hijacked in Tokyo, Japan.
2005 – Three bombs explode in the Naama Bay area of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, killing 88 people.

[Danny_Kaye]

On July 23, 2009, Buehrle threw a perfect game against the Tampa Bay Rays at U.S. Cellular Field.

It was the eighteenth perfect game in MLB history and Buehrle's second career no-hitter.

[Ed The King]

1132 – Battle of Nocera between Ranulf II of Alife and Roger II of Sicily.
1148 – Louis VII of France lays siege to Damascus during the Second Crusade.
1411 – Battle of Harlaw, one of the bloodiest battles in Scotland, takes place.
1487 – Citizens of Leeuwarden, Netherlands strike against ban on foreign beer.
1534 – French explorer Jacques Cartier plants a cross on the Gaspé Peninsula and takes possession of the territory in the name of Francis I of France.

The Iroquoians are none too happy about this.
1567 – Mary, Queen of Scots, is forced to abdicate and replaced by her 1-year-old son James VI.
1701 – Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founds the trading post at Fort Pontchartrain, which later becomes the city of Detroit, Michigan.

1715 – A Spanish treasure fleet of 10 ships under Admiral Ubilla leaves Havana, Cuba for Spain. Seven days later, 9 of them sink in a storm off the coast of Florida. A few centuries later, treasure is salvaged from these wrecks.
1814 – War of 1812: General Phineas Riall advances toward the Niagara River to halt Jacob Brown's American invaders.

1823 – Slavery is abolished in Chile.
1832 – Benjamin Bonneville leads the first wagon train across the Rocky Mountains by using Wyoming's South Pass.
1847 – After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City. Celebrations of this event include the Pioneer Day Utah state holiday and the Days of '47 Parade.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Kernstown – Confederate General Jubal Anderson Early defeats Union troops led by General George Crook in an effort to keep them out of the Shenandoah Valley.
1866 – Reconstruction: Tennessee becomes the first U.S. State to be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War.
1901 – O. Henry is released from prison in Austin, Texas after serving three years for embezzlement from a bank.
1911 – Hiram Bingham III re-discovers Machu Picchu, "the Lost City of the Incas".
1915 – The passenger ship S.S. Eastland capsizes in central Chicago, with the loss of 845 lives.
1923 – The Treaty of Lausanne, settling the boundaries of modern Turkey, is signed in Switzerland by Greece, Bulgaria and other countries that fought in World War I.
1927 – The Menin Gate war memorial is unveiled at Ypres.
1929 – The Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, goes into effect (it is first signed in Paris on August 27, 1928 by most leading world powers).
1931 – A fire at a home for the elderly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania kills 48 people.
1935 – The world's first children's railway opens in Tbilisi, USSR.
1935 – The dust bowl heat wave reaches its peak, sending temperatures to 109°F (44°C) in Chicago and 104°F (40°C) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
1937 – Alabama drops rape charges against the so-called "Scottsboro Boys".
1938 – First ascent of the Eiger north face.
1943 – World War II: Operation Gomorrah begins: British and Canadian aeroplanes bomb Hamburg by night, those of the Americans by day. By the end of the operation in November, 9,000 tons of explosives will have killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.
1950 – Cape Canaveral Air Force Station begins operations with the launch of a Bumper rocket.
1959 – At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev have a "Kitchen Debate".
1966 – Michael Pelkey makes the first BASE jump from El Capitan along with Brian Schubert. Both came out with broken bones. BASE jumping has now been banned from El Cap.
1967 – During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declares to a crowd of over 100,000 in Montreal: Vive le Québec libre! ("Long live free Quebec!"). The statement, interpreted as support for Quebec independence, delighted many Quebecers but angered the Canadian government and many English Canadians.
1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 11 splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
1972 – Bugojno group is caught by Yugoslav security forces.
1974 – Watergate scandal: the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and they order him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.
1974 – After the Turkish invasion of Cyprus the Greek military junta collapses and democracy is restored.
1977 – End of a four day long Libyan-Egyptian War.
1982 – Heavy rain causes a mudslide that destroys a bridge at Nagasaki, Japan, killing 299.
1983 – George Brett batting for the Kansas City Royals against the New York Yankees, has a game-winning home run nullified in the "Pine Tar Incident".
1990 – Iraqi forces start massing on the Kuwait-Iraq border.
1998 – Russell Eugene Weston Jr. bursts into the United States Capitol and opens fire killing two police officers. He is later ruled to be incompetent to stand trial.
2001 – Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last Tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, is sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, becoming the first monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office.
2001 – Bandaranaike Airport attack is carried out by 14 Tamil Tiger commandos, all died in this attack. They destroyed 11 Aircrafts (mostly military) and damaged 15, there are no civilian casualties. This incident slowed down Sri Lankan economy.
2002 – Democrat James Traficant is expelled from the United States House of Representatives on a vote of 420 to 1.
2005 – Lance Armstrong wins his seventh consecutive Tour de France.
2007 – Libya frees all six of the Medics in the HIV trial in Libya.

[Ed The King]

July 25th

285 – Diocletian appoints Maximian as Caesar, co-ruler.
306 – Constantine I is proclaimed Roman emperor by his troops.
864 – The Edict of Pistres of Charles the Bald orders defensive measures against the Vikings.
1139 – Battle of Ourique: The independence of Portugal from the Kingdom of León declared after the Almoravids, led by Ali ibn Yusuf, are defeated by Prince Afonso Henriques. He then becomes Afonso I, King of Portugal, after calling the first assembly of the estates-general of Portugal at Lamego, where he is given the Crown from the Bishop of Bragança, to confirm the independence.
1261 – The city of Constantinople is recaptured by Nicaean forces under the command of Alexios Strategopoulos, re-establishing the Byzantine Empire.
1536 – Sebastián de Belalcázar on his search of El Dorado founds the city of Santiago de Cali.
1538 – The city of Guayaquil is founded by the Spanish Conquistador Francisco de Orellana and given the name Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de Santiago de Guayaquil.
1547 – Henry II of France is crowned.
1567 – Don Diego de Losada founds the city of Santiago de Leon de Caracas, modern-day Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela.
1593 – Henry IV of France publicly converts from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism.
1603 – James VI of Scotland is crowned as king of England (James I of England), bringing the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into personal union. Political union would occur in 1707.
1693 – Ignacio de Maya founds the Real Santiago de las Sabinas, now known as Sabinas Hidalgo, Nuevo León, México.
1722 – Dummer's War begins along the Maine-Massachusetts border.
1755 – British governor Charles Lawrence and the Nova Scotia Council order the deportation of the Acadians. Thousands of Acadians are sent to the British Colonies in America, France and England. Some later move to Louisiana, while others resettle in New Brunswick.
1758 – Seven Years' War: the island battery at Fortress Louisbourg in Nova Scotia is silenced and all French warships are destroyed or taken.

1759 – French and Indian War: in Western New York, British forces capture Fort Niagara from the French, who subsequently abandon Fort Rouillé.
1788 – Wolfgang Mozart completes his Symphony No. 40 in G minor (K550).

1792 – The Brunswick Manifesto is issued to the population of Paris promising vengeance if the French Royal Family is harmed.
1795 – The first stone of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct is laid.
1797 – Horatio Nelson loses more than 300 men and his right arm during the failed conquest attempt of Tenerife (Spain).
1799 – At Aboukir in Egypt, Napoleon I of France defeats 10,000 Ottomans under Mustafa Pasha.
1814 – War of 1812: Battle of Lundy's Lane – reinforcements arrive near Niagara Falls for General Riall's British and Canadian forces and a bloody, all-night battle with Jacob Brown's Americans commences at 18.00; the Americans retreat to Fort Erie.
1824 – Costa Rica annexes Guanacaste from Nicaragua.
1837 – The first commercial use of an electric telegraph is successfully demonstrated by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone on 25 July 1837 between Euston and Camden Town in London.
1853 – Joaquin Murietta, the famous Californio bandit known as "Robin Hood of El Dorado", is killed.
1861 – American Civil War: The United States Congress passes the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution, stating that the war is being fought to preserve the Union and not to end slavery.
1866 – The United States Congress passes legislation authorizing the five-star rank of General of the Army. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant becomes the first to be promoted to this rank.
1868 – Wyoming becomes a United States territory.
1869 – The Japanese daimyō begin returning their land holdings to the emperor as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese Date: June 17, 1869).
1894 – The First Sino-Japanese War begins when the Japanese fire upon a Chinese warship.
1898 – The United States invasion of Puerto Rico begins with U.S. troops led by General Nelson Miles landing at harbor of Guánica, Puerto Rico (The land invasion, proper, began that day: Sea-based bombardment and shelling of the capital city of San Juan had been occurring since May 1898).
1907 – Korea becomes a protectorate of Japan.
1908 – Ajinomoto is founded. Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University discovers that a key ingredient in Konbu soup stock is monosodium glutamate (MSG), and patents a process for manufacturing it.
1909 – Louis Blériot makes the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine from (Calais to Dover) in 37 minutes.
1915 – RFC Captain Lanoe Hawker becomes the first British military aviator to earn the Victoria Cross, for defeating three German two-seat observation aircraft in one day, over the Western Front.
1917 – Sir Thomas Whyte introduces the first income tax in Canada as a "temporary" measure (lowest bracket is 4% and highest is 25%).

1920 – Telecommunications: the first transatlantic two-way radio broadcast takes place.
1920 – France captures Damascus.
1925 – Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) is established.
1934 – The Nazis assassinate Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in a failed coup attempt.
1940 – General Guisan orders the Swiss Army to resist German invasion and makes surrender illegal.
1942 – Norwegian Manifesto calls for nonviolent resistance to the Nazis.
1943 – World War II: Benito Mussolini is forced out of office by his own Italian Grand Council and is replaced by Pietro Badoglio.
1944 – World War II: Operation Spring – one of the bloodiest days for the First Canadian Army during the war: 1,500 casualties, including 500 killed.
1946 – Operation Crossroads: an atomic bomb is detonated underwater in the lagoon of Bikini atoll.
1946 – At Club 500 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis stage their first show as a comedy team.
1948 – The Australian cricket team sets a world record for the highest successful run-chase in Test cricket history in the Fourth Test against England.
1952 – The U.S. non-incorporated colonial territory of Puerto Rico adopts a "constitution" of local-limited powers, approved by the United States Congress in contravention of then-current international law.
1956 – 45 miles south of Nantucket Island, the Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria collides with the MS Stockholm in heavy fog and sinks the next day, killing 51.
1957 – The Republic of Tunisia is proclaimed.
1958 – The African Regroupment Party (PRA) holds its first congress in Cotonou.
1959 – SR-N1 hovercraft crosses the English Channel from Calais to Dover in just over 2 hours.
1961 – In a speech John F. Kennedy emphasizes that any attack on Berlin is an attack on NATO.
1965 – Bob Dylan goes electric as he plugs in at the Newport Folk Festival, signaling a major change in folk and rock music.
1969 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard Nixon declares the Nixon Doctrine, stating that the United States now expects its Asian allies to take care of their own military defense. This is the start of the "Vietnamization" of the war.
1973 – Soviet Mars 5 space probe launched.
1978 – The Cerro Maravilla incident occurs.
1978 – Louise Brown, the world's first "test tube baby" is born.
1979 – Another section of the Sinai Peninsula is peacefully returned by Israel to Egypt.
1983 – Black July: 37 Tamil political prisoners at the Welikada high security prison in Colombo are massacred by the fellow Sinhalese prisoners.
1984 – Salyut 7 cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk.
1993 – Israel launches a massive attack against terrorist forces in Lebanon in what the Israelis call Operation Accountability, and the Lebanese call Seven-Day War.
1993 – The Saint James Church massacre occurs in Kenilworth, Cape Town, South Africa.
1994 – Israel and Jordan sign the Washington Declaration, which formally ends the state of war that had existed between the nations since 1948.
1995 – A gas bottle explodes in Saint Michel station of line B of the RER (Paris regional train network). Eight are killed and 80 wounded.
1996 – In a military coup in Burundi, Pierre Buyoya deposes Sylvestre Ntibantunganya.
2000 – Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde supersonic passenger jet, F-BTSC, crashes just after takeoff from Paris killing all 109 aboard and 4 on the ground.
2007 – Pratibha Patil is sworn in as India's first woman president.

[Ed The King]

July 26th

657 – First Fitna: the Battle of Siffin see the troops led by Ali ibn Abi Talib and those led by Muawiyah I clashing.
811 – Battle of Pliska: Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus I is killed and his heir Stauracius is seriously wounded.
920 – Rout of an alliance of Christian troops from Navarre and Léon against the Muslims at Pamplona.
1309 – Henry VII is recognized King of the Romans by Pope Clement V.
1469 – Wars of the Roses: the Battle of Edgecote Moor pitting the forces of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick against those of Edward IV of England takes place.
1581 – Plakkaat van Verlatinghe (Act of Abjuration): the northern Low Countries declare their independence from the Spanish king, Philip II.
1745 – The first recorded women's cricket match takes place near Guildford, England.
1758 – French and Indian War: the Siege of Louisbourg ends with British forces defeating the French and taking control of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
1775 – The office that would later become the United States Post Office Department is established by the Second Continental Congress.
1788 – New York ratifies the United States Constitution and becomes the 11th state of the United States.
1803 – The Surrey Iron Railway, arguably the world's first public railway, opens in south London.
1822 – José de San Martín arrives in Guayaquil, Ecuador, to meet with Simón Bolívar.
1822 – First day of the three-day Battle of Dervenakia, between the Ottoman Empire force led by Mahmud Dramali Pasha and the Greek Revolutionary force led by Theodoros Kolokotronis.
1847 – Liberia declares independence.
1861 – American Civil War: George B. McClellan assumes command of the Army of the Potomac following a disastrous Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run.
1863 – American Civil War: Morgan's Raid ends – At Salineville, Ohio, Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan and 360 of his volunteers are captured by Union forces.
1878 – In California, the poet and American West outlaw calling himself "Black Bart" makes his last clean getaway when he steals a safe box from a Wells Fargo stagecoach. The empty box will be found later with a taunting poem inside.
1882 – Premiere of Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal at Bayreuth.
1882 – The Republic of Stellaland is founded in Southern Africa.
1887 – Publication of the Unua Libro, founding the Esperanto movement.
1890 – In Buenos Aires the Revolución del Parque takes place, forcing President Juárez Celman's resignation.
1891 – France annexes Tahiti.
1908 – United States Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte issues an order to immediately staff the Office of the Chief Examiner (later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation).
1914 – Serbia and Bulgaria interrupt diplomatic relationship.
1936 – The Axis Powers decide to intervene in the Spanish Civil War.
1936 – King Edward VIII, in one of his few official duties before he abdicates the throne, officially unveils the Canadian National Vimy Memorial.
1937 – End of the Battle of Brunete in the Spanish Civil War.
1941 – World War II: in response to the Japanese occupation of French Indo-China, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the seizure of all Japanese assets in the United States.
1944 – World War II: the Soviet army enters Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, liberating it from the Nazis. Only 300 Jews survive out of 160,000 living in Lviv prior to occupation.
1944 – The first German V-2 rocket hits Great Britain.
1945 – The Labour Party wins the United Kingdom general election of July 5 by a landslide, removing Winston Churchill from power.
1945 – The Potsdam Declaration is signed in Potsdam, Germany.
1945 – The US Navy cruiser USS Indianapolis arrives at Tinian with parts of the warhead for the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
1946 – Aloha Airlines begins service from Honolulu International Airport
1947 – Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into United States law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, United States Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the United States National Security Council.
1948 – U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs Executive Order 9981 desegregating the military of the United States.
1952 – King Farouk of Egypt abdicates in favor of his son Fuad.
1953 – Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks, thus beginning the Cuban Revolution.
1953 – Arizona Governor John Howard Pyle orders an anti-polygamy law enforcement crackdown on residents of Short Creek, Arizona, which becomes known as the Short Creek Raid.
1956 – Following the World Bank's refusal to fund building the Aswan High Dam, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal sparking international condemnation.
1957 – Carlos Castillo Armas, dictator of Guatemala, is assassinated.
1958 – Explorer program: Explorer 4 is launched.
1963 – Syncom 2, the world's first geosynchronous satellite, is launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta B booster.
1963 – An earthquake in Skopje, Yugoslavia (now in the Republic of Macedonia) leaves 1,100 dead.
1963 – The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development votes to admit Japan.
1965 – Full independence is granted to the Maldives.
1966 – Lord Gardiner issues the Practice Statement in the House of Lords stating that the House is not bound to follow its own previous precedent.
1968 – Vietnam War: South Vietnamese opposition leader Trương Đình Dzũ is sentenced to five years hard labor for advocating the formation of a coalition government as a way to move toward an end to the war.
1971 – Apollo Program: launch of Apollo 15.
1974 – Greek Prime Minister Constantinos Karamanlis forms the country's first civil government after seven years of military rule.
1975 – Formation of a military triumvirate in Portugal.
1977 – The National Assembly of Quebec imposes the use of French as the official language of the provincial government.
 
1989 – A federal grand jury indicts Cornell University student Robert T. Morris, Jr. for releasing the Morris worm, thus becoming the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
1990 – The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is signed into law by President George H. W. Bush.
1994 – Russian President Boris Yeltsin orders the removal of Russian troops from Estonia.
1999 – Cessation of combat activities after the Kargil War, celebrated as Kargil Vijay Diwas in India.
2005 – Space Shuttle program: STS-114 Mission – Launch of Discovery, NASA's first scheduled flight mission after the Columbia Disaster in 2003.
2005 – Mumbai, India receives 99.5cm of rain (39.17 inches) within 24 hours, bringing the city to a halt for over 2 days.
2005 – Samir Geagea, the Lebanese Forces (LF) leader, is released after spending 11 years in a solitary confinement. His release came after the end of the Syrian occupation to Lebanon.

[Ed The King]

July 27th

1054 – Siward, Earl of Northumbria invades Scotland to support Malcolm Canmore against Macbeth of Scotland, who usurped the Scottish throne from Malcolm's father, King Duncan. Macbeth is defeated at Dunsinane.
1214 – Battle of Bouvines: in France, Philip II of France defeats John of England.
1302 – Battle of Bapheus: decisive Ottoman victory over the Byzantines opening up Bithynia for Turkish conquest.
1549 – The Jesuit priest Francis Xavier's ship reaches Japan.
1663 – The English Parliament passes the second Navigation Act requiring that all goods bound for the American colonies have to be sent in English ships from English ports.
1689 – Glorious Revolution: the Battle of Killiecrankie ends.
1694 – A Royal Charter is granted to the Bank of England.
1720 – The Battle of Grengam marks the second important victory of the Russian Navy.
1778 – American Revolution: First Battle of Ushant – British and French fleets fight to a standoff.
1789 – The first U.S. federal government agency, the Department of Foreign Affairs, is established (it will be later renamed Department of State).
1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre is arrested after encouraging the execution of more than 17,000 "enemies of the Revolution".
1862 – Sailing from San Francisco to Panama City, the SS Golden Gate catches fire and sinks off Manzanillo, Mexico, killing 231.
1866 – The Atlantic Cable is successfully completed, allowing transatlantic telegraph communication for the first time.
1880 – Second Anglo-Afghan War: Battle of Maiwand – In a pyrrhic victory, Afghan forces led by Ayub Khan defeat the British Army in battle near Maiwand, Afghanistan.
1914 – Felix Manalo registers the Iglesia ni Cristo with the Philippine government.
1917 – The Allies reach the Yser Canal at the Battle of Passchendaele.
1919 – The Chicago Race Riot erupt after a racial incident occurred on a South Side beach, leading to 38 fatalities and 537 injuries over a five-day period.
1921 – Researchers at the University of Toronto led by biochemist Frederick Banting announce the discovery of the hormone insulin.

1928 – Tich Freeman becomes the only bowler ever to take 200 first-class wickets before the end of July.
1940 – The animated short A Wild Hare is released, introducing the character of Bugs Bunny.
1941 – Japanese troops occupy French Indo-China.
1949 – Initial flight of the de Havilland Comet, the first jet-powered airliner.
1953 – The Korean War ends when the United States, the People's Republic of China, and North Korea sign an armistice agreement. Syngman Rhee, President of South Korea, refuses to sign but pledges to observe the armistice.
1955 – The Allied occupation of Austria stemming from World War II, ends.
1964 – Vietnam War: 5,000 more American military advisers are sent to South Vietnam bringing the total number of United States forces in Vietnam to 21,000.
1974 – Watergate Scandal: the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee votes 27 to 11 to recommend the first article of impeachment (for obstruction of justice) against President Richard Nixon.
1976 – Former Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka is arrested on suspicion of violating foreign exchange and foreign trade laws in connection with the Lockheed bribery scandals.
1981 – British television: on Coronation Street, Ken Barlow marries Deirdre Langton, which proves to be a national event scoring massive viewer numbers for the show.
1983 – Black July: 18 Tamil political prisoners at the Welikada |high security prison in Colombo are massacred by the Sinhalese prisoners, the second such massacre in two days.
1987 – RMS Titanic, Inc. begins the first expedited salvaging of wreckage of the RMS Titanic.
1990 – The Supreme Soviet of the Belarusian Soviet Republic declares independence of Belarus from the Soviet Union. Until 1996 the day is celebrated as the Independence Day of Belarus; after a referendum held that year the celebration of independence is transferred to June 3.
1990 – The Jamaat al Muslimeen stage a coup d'état attempt in Trinidad and Tobago, occupying the Parliament and the studios of Trinidad and Tobago Television, holding Prime Minister A. N. R. Robinson and most of his Cabinet as well as the staff at the television station hostage for 6 days.
1995 – The Korean War Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C..
1996 – Centennial Olympic Park bombing: in Atlanta, Georgia, a pipe bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Summer Olympics. One woman (Alice Hawthorne) is killed, and a cameraman suffers a heart attack fleeing the scene. 111 are injured.
1997 – About 50 people are killed in the Si Zerrouk massacre in Algeria.
2002 – Ukraine airshow disaster: a Sukhoi Su-27 fighter crashes during an air show at Lviv, Ukraine killing 85 and injuring more than 100 others, the largest air show disaster in history.
2005 – STS-114: NASA grounds the Space shuttle, pending an investigation of the external tank's continued foam-shedding problem. During ascent, the external tank of the Space Shuttle Discovery sheds a piece of foam slightly smaller than the piece that caused the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster; this foam does not strike the spacecraft.
2006 – The Federal Republic of Germany is deemed guilty in the loss of Bashkirian 2937 and DHL Flight 611, because it is illegal to outsource flight surveillance.
2007 – Phoenix News Helicopter Collision: news helicopters from Phoenix, Arizona television stations KNXV and KTVK collide over Steele Indian School Park in central Phoenix while covering a police chase; there are no survivors. This is the first known incidence of two news helicopters colliding in mid-air, and the worst civil aviation incident in Phoenix history.

[Ed The King]

July 28th

1364 – Troops of the Republic of Pisa and of the Republic of Florence clash in the Battle of Cascina.
1540 – Thomas Cromwell is executed at the order of Henry VIII of England on charges of treason. Henry marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the same day.
1609 – Bermuda is first settled by survivors of the English ship Sea Venture en route to Virginia.
1794 – Maximilien Robespierre is executed by guillotine in Paris during the French Revolution.
1809 – Peninsular War: Battle of Talavera – Sir Arthur Wellesley's British, Portuguese and Spanish army defeats a French force led by Joseph Bonaparte.
1821 – José de San Martín declares the independence of Peru from Spain.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Ezra Church – Confederate troops make a third unsuccessful attempt to drive Union forces from Atlanta, Georgia.
1865 – Welsh settlers arrive at Chubut in Argentina.
1868 – The 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is passed, establishing African-American citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law.
1896 – The city of Miami, Florida is incorporated.
1914 – World War I: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia after Serbia rejects the conditions of an ultimatum sent by Austria on July 23 following the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand.
1932 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover orders the United States Army to forcibly evict the "Bonus Army" of World War I veterans gathered in Washington, D.C.
1933 – Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Spain are established.
1935 – First flight of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.
1942 – World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin issues Order No. 227 in response to alarming German advances into the Soviet Union. Under the order all those who retreat or otherwise leave their positions without orders to do so were to be immediately executed.
1943 – World War II: Operation Gomorrah – The British bomb Hamburg causing a firestorm that kills 42,000 German civilians.
1945 – A U.S. Army B-25 bomber crashes into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building killing 14 and injuring 26.
1948 – The Metropolitan Police Flying Squad foils a bullion robbery in the "Battle of London Airport".
1955 – The Union Mundial pro Interlingua is founded at the first Interlingua congress in Tours, France.
1957 – Heavy rain and a mudslide in Isahaya, western Kyūshū, Japan, kill 992.
1965 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces his order to increase the number of United States troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.
1973 – Summer Jam at Watkins Glen: 600,000 people attend a rock festival at the Watkins Glen International Raceway.
1976 – The Tangshan earthquake measuring between 7.8 and 8.2 moment magnitude flattens Tangshan in the People's Republic of China, killing 242,769 and injuring 164,851.
1993 – Andorra joins the United Nations.
1996 – The remains of a prehistoric man are discovered near Kennewick, Washington. Such remains will be known as the Kennewick Man.
1997 – Guatemala becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
2001 – Australian Ian Thorpe becomes the first swimmer to win six gold medals at a single World Championships.
2002 – Nine coal miners trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, are rescued after 77 hours underground.
2005 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army calls an end to its thirty year long armed campaign in Northern Ireland.
2005 – Tornadoes touch down in a residential areas in south Birmingham and Coventry England, causing £4,000,000 worth of damages and injuring 39 people.
2008 – The historic Grand Pier in Weston-super-Mare burns down for the second time in 80 years.

[Hypno-Bubba]

... in 1940 Bugs Bunny debuted in "A Wild Hare".

35 years ago A-Rod was born.

53 years ago Bill Engval was born.

[Ed The King]

July 29th

1014 – Byzantine-Bulgarian Wars: Battle of Kleidion – Byzantine emperor Basil II inflicts a decisive defeat on the Bulgarian army, and his subsequent treatment of 15,000 prisoners reportedly causes Tsar Samuil of Bulgaria to die of a heart attack several months later, on October 6.
1030 – Ladejarl-Fairhair succession wars: Battle of Stiklestad – King Olaf II fights and dies trying to regain his Norwegian throne from the Danes.
1565 – The widowed Mary, Queen of Scots, marries Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, Duke of Albany, at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, Scotland.
1567 – James VI is crowned King of Scotland at Stirling.
1588 – Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines – English naval forces under the command of Lord Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake defeat the Spanish Armada off the coast of Gravelines, France.
1693 – War of the Grand Alliance: Battle of Landen – France wins a Pyrrhic victory over Allied forces in the Netherlands.
1793 – John Graves Simcoe decides to build a fort and settlement at Toronto, having sailed into the bay there.
1830 – Abdication of Charles X of France.
1836 – Inauguration of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
1847 – Cumberland School of Law is founded in Lebanon, Tennessee, United States, one of only 15 law schools to exist in the United States at the end of 1847.
1848 – Irish Potato Famine: Tipperary Revolt – in Tipperary, an unsuccessful nationalist revolt against British rule is put down by police.
1851 – Annibale de Gasparis discovers asteroid 15 Eunomia.
1858 – United States and Japan sign the Harris Treaty.
1864 – American Civil War: Confederate spy Belle Boyd is arrested by Union troops and detained at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C..
1899 – The First Hague Convention is signed.
1900 – In Italy, King Umberto I of Italy is assassinated by the anarchist Gaetano Bresci.
1901 – The Socialist Party of America is founded.
1907 – Sir Robert Baden Powell sets up the Brownsea Island Scout camp in Poole Harbour on the south coast of England. The camp ran from August 1 to August 9, 1907, and is regarded as the foundation of the Scouting movement.
1920 – Construction of the Link River Dam begins as part of the Klamath Reclamation Project.
1921 – Adolf Hitler becomes leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party.
1932 – Great Depression: in Washington, D.C., troops disperse the last of the "Bonus Army" of World War I veterans.
1937 – Tōngzhōu Incident: in Tōngzhōu (China), the East Hopei Army attacks Japanese troops and civilians.
1945 – The BBC Light Programme radio station is launched for mainstream light entertainment and music.
1948 – Olympic Games: The Games of the XIV Olympiad – after a hiatus of 12 years caused by World War II, the first Summer Olympics to be held since the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin open in London.
1957 – The International Atomic Energy Agency is established.
1958 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which creates the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
1959 – First United States Congress elections in Hawaii as a state of the Union.
1965 – Vietnam War: the first 4,000 101st Airborne Division paratroopers arrive in Vietnam, landing at Cam Ranh Bay.
1967 – Vietnam War: off the coast of North Vietnam the USS Forrestal catches on fire in the worst U.S. naval disaster since World War II, killing 134.
1967 – During the fourth day of celebrating its 400th anniversary, the city of Caracas, Venezuela is shaken by an earthquake, leaving approximately 500 dead.
1976 – In New York City, the "Son of Sam" kills one person and seriously wounds another in the first of a series of attacks.
1981 – A worldwide television audience of over 700 million people watch the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul's Cathedral in London.

1987 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President of France François Mitterrand sign the agreement to build a tunnel under the English Channel (Eurotunnel).
1987 – Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi and President of Sri Lanka J. R. Jayawardene sign the Indo-Lankan Pact on ethnic issues.
1988 – The film Cry Freedom is seized by South African authorities.
1993 – The Israeli Supreme Court acquits alleged Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk of all charges and he is set free.
1996 – The child protection portion of the Communications Decency Act is struck down by a U.S. federal court as too broad .
2005 – Astronomers announce their discovery of the dwarf planet Eris.

[Alphax]

2005 – Astronomers announce their discovery of the dwarf planet Eris.

I still think Xena would have been a cooler name.  But I do like the fact that Eris' moon, Dysnomia, is named after Eris' daughter, the demon spirit of lawless-ness.  (actress Lucy Lawless played Xena).

[Ed The King]

July 30th

762 – Baghdad is founded by caliph Al-Mansur.
1419 – First Defenestration of Prague: a crowd of radical Hussites kill seven members of the Prague city council.
1502 – Christopher Columbus lands at Guanaja in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras during his fourth voyage.
1608 – At Ticonderoga (now Crown Point, New York), Samuel de Champlain shoots and kills two Iroquois chiefs. This was to set the tone for French-Iroquois relations for the next one hundred years.
1619 – In Jamestown, Virginia, the first representative assembly in the Americas, the House of Burgesses, convenes for the first time.
1629 – An earthquake in Naples, Italy, kills about 10,000 people.
1729 – Foundation of Baltimore, Maryland.
1733 – The first Masonic Grand Lodge in the future United States is constituted in Massachusetts.
1756 – In Saint Petersburg, Bartolomeo Rastrelli presents the newly-built Catherine Palace to Empress Elizabeth and her courtiers.
1811 – Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, leader of the Mexican insurgency, is executed by the Spanish in Chihuahua, Mexico.
1825 – Malden Island is discovered by captain George Anson Byron.
1859 – First ascent of Grand Combin, one of the highest summits in the Alps.
1863 – Indian Wars: Chief Pocatello of the Shoshone tribe signs the Treaty of Box Elder, agreeing to stop the harassment of emigrant trails in southern Idaho and northern Utah.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of the Crater – Union forces attempt to break Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia by exploding a large bomb under their trenches.
1866 – New Orleans's Democratic government orders police to raid an integrated Republican Party meeting, killing 40 people and injuring 150.
1871 – The Staten Island Ferry Westfield's boiler explodes, killing over 85 people.
1916 – Black Tom Island explosion in Jersey City, New Jersey.
1930 – In Montevideo, Uruguay wins the first Football World Cup.
1932 – Premiere of Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees, the first cartoon short to use Technicolor and the first Academy Award winning cartoon short.
1945 – World War II: Japanese submarine I-58 sinks the USS Indianapolis, killing 883 seamen.
1956 – A joint resolution of the U.S. Congress is signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorizing In God We Trust as the U.S. national motto.
1965 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid.
1969 – Vietnam War: US President Richard M. Nixon makes an unscheduled visit to South Vietnam and meets with President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu and U.S. military commanders.
1971 – Apollo program: Apollo 15 Mission – David Scott and James Irwin on the Apollo Lunar Module module Falcon land on the Moon with the first Lunar Rover.
1971 – An All Nippon Airways Boeing 727 and a Japanese Air Force F-86 collide over Morioka, Japan killing 162.
1974 – Watergate Scandal: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon releases subpoenaed White House recordings after being ordered to do so by the United States Supreme Court.
1974 – Six Royal Canadian Army Cadets are killed and fifty-four are injured in an accidental grenade blast at CFB Valcartier Cadet Camp.
1975 – Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He is never seen or heard from again, and will be declared legally dead on this date in 1982.
1975 – The Troubles: three members of a popular cabaret band and two gunmen are killed during a botched paramilitary attack in Northern Ireland (see Miami Showband killings).
1978 – The 730 (transport), Okinawa changes its traffic on the right-hand side of the road to the left-hand side.
1980 – Vanuatu gains independence.
1980 – Israel's Knesset passes the Jerusalem Law
1997 – Eighteen lives are lost in the Thredbo Landslide in New South Wales, Australia.
2003 – In Mexico, the last 'old style' Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line.
2006 – The world's longest running music show Top of the Pops is broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. The show had aired for 42 years.
2006 – Lebanon War: At least 28 civilians, including 16 children are killed by the Israeli Air Force in what Lebanese call the Second Qana massacre.
2009 – A bomb explodes in Palma Nova, Mallorca, killing 2 police officers. Basque separatist group ETA is believed to be responsible.

[Born Blitzed]

July 30, 1792: Le Marseillaise, France's national anthem, was first performed in Paris.

1935: the pocket (paperback) book was first published, enabling cheap mass consumption of literature. An entire new market/genre, pulp fiction, was born from this simple yet revolutionary idea.

1975: The last time Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa was ever seen alive. Rumor has it that his remains were buried under Giants Stadium, an urban legend so pervasive that an episode of Mythbusters was dedicated to disproving it.

[Ed The King]

July 31st

Events
30 BC – Battle of Alexandria: Mark Antony achieves a minor victory over Octavian's forces, but most of his army subsequently deserts, leading to his suicide.
781 – The oldest recorded eruption of Mt. Fuji (Traditional Japanese date: July 6, 781).
904 – Thessalonica falls to the Arabs, who destroy the city.
1009 – Pope Sergius IV becomes the 142nd pope, succeeding Pope John XVIII.
1200 – Attempted usurpation of John Komnenos the Fat.
1423 – Hundred Years' War: Battle of Cravant – the French army is defeated at Cravant on the banks of the river Yonne.
1451 – Jacques Cœur is arrested by order of Charles VII of France.
1492 – The Jews are expelled from Spain when the Alhambra Decree takes effect.
1498 – On his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to discover the island of Trinidad.
1588 – The Spanish Armada is spotted off the coast of England.
1655 – Russo-Polish War (1654-1667): the Russian army enters the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Vilnius, which it holds for six years.
1658 – Aurangzeb is proclaimed Moghul emperor of India.
1667 – Second Anglo-Dutch War: Treaty of Breda ends the conflict.
1703 – Daniel Defoe is placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet, but is pelted with flowers.
1741 – Charles Albert of Bavaria invades Upper Austria and Bohemia.
1777 – The U.S. Second Continental Congress passes a resolution that the services of Marquis de Lafayette "be accepted, and that, in consideration of his zeal, illustrious family and connexions, he have the rank and commission of major-general of the United States."
1790 – First U.S. patent is issued to inventor Samuel Hopkins for a potash process.
1856 – Christchurch, New Zealand is chartered as a city.
1865 – The first narrow gauge mainline railway in the world opens at Grandchester, Australia.
1895 – The Basque Nationalist Party (Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea-Partido Nacionalista Vasco) is founded by Basque nationalist leader Sabino Arana.
1913 – The Balkan States signs an armistice at Bucharest.
1919 – German national assembly adopts the Weimar constitution, which comes into force on August 14.
1930 – The radio mystery program The Shadow is aired for the first time.
1932 – The NSDAP wins more than 38% of the vote in German elections.
1936 – The International Olympic Committee announces that the 1940 Summer Olympics will be held in Tokyo. However, the games are given back to the IOC after the Second Sino-Japanese War breaks out, and are eventually cancelled altogether because of World War II.
1938 – Bulgaria signs a non-aggression pact with Greece and other states of Balkan Antanti (Turkey, Romania, Yugoslavia).
1938 – Archaeologists discover engraved gold and silver plates from King Darius in Persepolis.
1940 – A doodlebug train in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio collides with a multi-car freight train heading in the opposite direction, killing 43 people.
1941 – Holocaust: under instructions from Adolf 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."
1945 – Pierre Laval, the fugitive former leader of Vichy France, surrenders to Allied soldiers in Austria.
1945 – John K. Giles attempts to escape from Alcatraz prison.
1948 – At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.
1951 – Japan Airlines is established.
1954 – First ascent of K2, by an Italian expedition led by Ardito Desio.
1959 – The Basque separatist organisation ETA is founded.
1961 – At Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts, the first All-Star Game tie in major league baseball history occurs when the game is stopped in the 9th inning because of rain.
1964 – Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the moon, with images 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from earth-bound telescopes.
1970 – Black Tot Day: The last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy.
1971 – Apollo program: Apollo 15 astronauts become the first to ride in a lunar rover.
1972 – Northeast Airlines flies its last flight before being integrated into Delta Air Lines the next day.
1972 – Operation Motorman: British troops move into the no-go areas of Belfast and Derry, Northern Ireland. End of Free Derry.
1972 – Three car bombs are detonated in Claudy, Northern Ireland, killing nine in what is believed to be a Provisional Irish Republican Army attack.
1973 – A Delta Air Lines jetliner crashes while landing in fog at Logan Airport, Boston, Massachusetts killing 89.
1976 – Viking program: Viking 1 – NASA releases the famous Face on Mars photo.
1981 – A 42 day-long strike of Major League Baseball ends.
1987 – A rare, class F4 tornado rips through Edmonton, Alberta, killing 27 people and causing $330 million in damage.
1988 – 32 people are killed and 1,674 injured when a bridge at the Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal collapses in Butterworth, Malaysia.
1991 – The Medininkai Massacre in Lithuania. Soviet OMON attacks Lithuanian customs post in Medininkai, killing 7 officers and severely wounding one other.
1992 – A Thai Airways Airbus A300-310 crashes into a mountain north of Kathmandu, Nepal killing 113.
1992 – Georgia joins the United Nations.
1999 – Discovery Program: Lunar Prospector – NASA intentionally crashes the spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the moon's surface.
2002 – Hebrew University of Jerusalem is attacked when a bomb explodes in a cafeteria, killing 9.
2006 – Fidel Castro hands over power temporarily to brother Raúl Castro.
2007 – Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and the longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end.

[Ed The King]

August 1st

30 BC – Octavian (later known as Augustus) enters Alexandria, Egypt, bringing it under the control of the Roman Republic.
69 – Batavian rebellion: The Batavians in Germania Inferior (Netherlands) revolt under the leadership of Gaius Julius Civilis.
527 – Justinian I becomes the sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire.
607 – Ono no Imoko is dispatched as envoy to the Sui court in China (Traditional Japanese date: July 3, 607).
902 – Taormina, the last Byzantine stronghold in Sicily, is captured by the Aghlabid army.
1203 – Isaac II Angelus, restored Eastern Roman Emperor, declares his son Alexius IV Angelus co-emperor after pressure from the forces of the Fourth Crusade.
1291 – The Swiss Confederation is formed with the signature of the Federal Charter.
1492 – Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile drive the Jews out of Spain.
1498 – Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to visit what is now Venezuela.
1619 – First African slaves arrive in Jamestown, Virginia.
1664 – The Ottoman Empire is defeated in the Battle of Saint Gotthard by an Austrian army led by Raimondo Montecuccoli, resulting in the Peace of Vasvár.
1798 – French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay) – Battle begins when a British fleet engages the French Revolutionary Navy fleet in an unusual night action.
1800 – The Act of Union 1800 is passed in which merges the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
1820 – London's Regent's Canal opens.
1828 – Bolton and Leigh Railway opens to freight traffic.
1831 – A new London Bridge opens.
1832 – The Black Hawk War ends.
1834 – Slavery is abolished in the British Empire as the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 comes into force.
1838 – Non-labourer slaves in most of the British Empire are emancipated.
1840 – Labourer slaves in most of the British Empire are emancipated.
1842 – Lombard Street Riot erupts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
1855 – First ascent of Dufourspitze (Monte Rosa), the second highest summit in the Alps.
1876 – Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state.
1894 – The First Sino-Japanese War erupts between Japan and China over Korea.
1902 – The United States buys the rights to the Panama Canal from France.
1907 – Start of First Scout camp on Brownsea Island.
1914 – Germany declares war on Russia at the opening of World War I. The Swiss Army mobilises because of World War I
1927 – The Nanchang Uprising marks the first significant battle in the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and Communist Party of China. This day is commemorated as the anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army.
1937 – Tito reads the resolution "Manifesto of constitutional congress of KPH" to the constitutive congress of KPH (Croatian Communist Party) in woods near Samobor.
1941 – The first Jeep is produced.
1944 – Anne Frank makes the last entry in her diary.
1944 – Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi occupation breaks out in Warsaw, Poland.
1948 – The U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations is founded.
1957 – The United States and Canada form the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).
1960 – Dahomey (later renamed Benin) declares independence from France.
1960 – Communist Party of Independence and Work is banned in Senegal.
1960 – Islamabad declared as the federal capital of the Government of Pakistan.
1964 – The Belgian Congo is renamed the Republic of the Congo.
1966 – Charles Whitman kills 15 people at The University of Texas at Austin before being killed by the police.
1966 – Purges of intellectuals and imperialists becomes official People's Republic of China policy at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
1967 – Israel annexes East Jerusalem.
1968 – The coronation is held of Hassanal Bolkiah, the 29th Sultan of Brunei.
1975 – CSCE Final Act creates the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
1977 – Former Lockheed U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers crashes the news helicopter he is flying in Los Angeles
1980 – Buttevant Rail Disaster kills 18 and injures dozens of train passengers in Ireland.
1981 – MTV begins broadcasting in the United States and airs its first video, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles.
1993 – The Great Flood of 1993 comes to a peak.
1995 – The first Victoria's Secret Fashion Show is held at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.
1996 – Michael Johnson breaks the 200m world record by 0.30 seconds with a time of 19.32 seconds at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.
2001 – An agreement is reached on the position of the minority Albanian language in the Republic of Macedonia.
2001 – Bulgaria, Cyprus, Latvia, Malta, Slovenia and Slovakia join the European Environment Agency.
2001 – Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore has a Ten Commandments monument installed in the judiciary building, leading to a lawsuit to have it removed and his own removal from office.
2004 – A supermarket fire kills 396 people and injures 500 in Asunción, Paraguay.
2007 – The I-35W Mississippi River Bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, collapses during the evening rush hour.
2009 – A shooting attack at the Gay and Lesbian Association building in Tel-Aviv, Israel, results in the deaths of two people.

[Ed The King]

August 2nd

338 BC – A Macedonian army led by Philip II defeated the combined forces of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea, securing Macedonian hegemony in Greece and the Aegean.
216 BC – Second Punic War: Battle of Cannae – The Carthaginian army lead by Hannibal defeats a numerically superior Roman army under command of consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro.
1377 – Russian troops are defeated in the Battle on Pyana River because of drunkenness.
1610 – Henry Hudson sails into what it is now known as Hudson Bay, thinking he had made it through the Northwest Passage and reached the Pacific Ocean.
1776 – Possible, but disputed, date of signature of the United States Declaration of Independence.
1790 – The first US Census is conducted.
1798 – French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay) concludes in a British victory
1869 – Japan's samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant class system (Shinōkōshō) is abolished as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese date: June 25, 1869).
1870 – Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway, opens in London.
1903 – Fall of the Ottoman Empire: Unsuccessful uprising led by the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization against Ottoman Turkey, also known as the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising.
1916 – World War I: Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of the Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto.
1918 – Japan announces that it is deploying troops to Siberia in the aftermath of World War I.
1932 – The positron (antiparticle of the electron) is discovered by Carl D. Anderson.
1934 – Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany.
1937 – The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 is passed in America, the effect of which is to render marijuana and all its by-products illegal.
1939 – Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan project to develop a nuclear weapon.
1943 – Rebellion in the Nazi death camp of Treblinka.
1943 – World War II: PT-109 rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri and sinks. Lt. John F. Kennedy, future U.S. President, saves all but two of his crew.
1944 – ASNOM: Birth of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, Day of the Republic in the Republic of Macedonia.
1945 – World War II: Potsdam Conference, at which the Allied Powers discuss the future of defeated Germany, concludes.
1964 – Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident – North Vietnamese gunboats allegedly fire on U.S. destroyers, USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy.
1968 – The 1968 Casiguran Earthquake hits Casiguran, Aurora, Philippines killing more than 270 people and wounding 261.
1973 – A flash fire kills 51 at the Summerland amusement centre at Douglas, Isle of Man.
1980 – A bomb explodes at the railway station in Bologna, Italy, killing 85 people and wounding more than 200.
1985 – Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar crashes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport killing 137.
1989 – Pakistan is re-admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations, for restoring democracy since 1972.
1989 – 1989 Valvettiturai massacre is carried out by Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka killing 64 ethnic Tamil civilians.
1990 – Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to conflict with coalition forces in the Gulf War.

[Ed The King]

August 3rd

8 – Roman Empire general Tiberius defeats Dalmatians on the river Bathinus.
435 – Deposed Patriarch of Constantinople Nestorius, considered the originator of Nestorianism, is exiled by Roman Emperor Theodosius II to a monastery in Egypt.
881 – Battle of Saucourt-en-Vimeu: Louis III of France defeats the Vikings, an event celebrated in the poem Ludwigslied
1492 – Christopher Columbus sets sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain.
1492 – The Jews of Spain are expelled by the Catholic Monarchs.
1527 – First known letter is sent from North America by John Rut while at St. John's, Newfoundland.

Pleasing your Honourable Grace to heare of your servant John Rut with all his company here in good health thanks be to God.

The conclusion of the letter reads:

...the third day of August we entered into a good harbour called St. John and there we found Eleuen Saile of Normans and one Brittaine and two Portugal barks all a fishing and so we are ready to depart towards Cap de Bras that is 25 leagues as shortly as we have fished and so along the Coast until we may meete with our fellowe and so with all diligence that lyes in me toward parts to that Ilands that we are command at our departing and thus Jesu save and keepe you Honourable Grace and all your Honourable Reuer. In the Haven of St. John the third day of August written in hast 1527, by your servant John Rut to his uttermost of his power

1645 – Thirty Years' War: Second Battle of Nördlingen (Battle of Allerheim).
1678 – Robert LaSalle builds the Le Griffon, the first known ship built on the Great Lakes.
1783 – Mount Asama erupts in Japan, killing 35,000 people.
1811 – First ascent of Jungfrau, third highest summit in the Bernese Alps.
1852 – First Boat Race between Yale and Harvard, the first American intercollegiate athletic event. Harvard won.
1860 – The Second Maori War begins in New Zealand.
1900 – The Firestone Tire & Rubber Company is founded.
1913 – Wheatland Hop Riot.
1914 – World War I: Germany declares war against France.
1916 – World War I: Battle of Romani – Allied forces, under the command of Archibald Murray, defeat an attacking Ottoman army, under the command of Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, securing the Suez Canal, and beginning the Ottoman retreat from the Sinai.
1923 – Calvin Coolidge is sworn in as the 30th President of the United States in the early morning following the death of Warren G. Harding the previous day.
1934 – Adolf Hitler becomes the supreme leader of Germany by joining the offices of President and Chancellor into Führer.
1936 – Jesse Owens wins the 100 meter dash, defeating Ralph Metcalfe, at the Berlin Olympics.
1940 – World War II: Forces of Italy begin the invasion of British Somaliland.
1948 – Whittaker Chambers accuses Alger Hiss of being a communist and a spy for the Soviet Union.
1949 – The National Basketball Association is founded in the United States.
1958 – The nuclear submarine USS Nautilus travels beneath the Arctic ice cap.
1960 – Niger gains independence from France.
1972 – The United States Senate ratifies the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
1975 – A privately chartered Boeing 707 crashes into the mountainside near Agadir, Morocco killing 188.
1977 – The United States Senate hearing on MKULTRA.
1981 – Senegalese opposition parties, under the leadership of Mamadou Dia, launch the Antiimperialist Action Front-Suxxali Reew Mi.
1997 – Oued El-Had and Mezouara massacre in Algeria; 40-76 villagers killed.
2001 – The Real IRA detonates a car bomb in Ealing, London, UK injuring seven people.
2004 – The pedestal of the Statue of Liberty reopens after being closed since the September 11 attacks.
2005 – President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya of Mauritania is overthrown in a military coup while attending the funeral of King Fahd in Saudi Arabia.

[Ed The King]

August 4th

70 – The destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans.
367 – Gratian, son of Roman Emperor Valentinian I, is named co-Augustus by his father and associated to the throne aged eight.
1265 – Second Barons' War: Battle of Evesham – the army of Prince Edward (the future king Edward I of England) defeats the forces of rebellious barons led by Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, killing de Montfort and many of his allies. Good to be King Edward
1532 – the Duchy of Brittany is annexed to the Kingdom of France.
1578 – Battle of Al Kasr al Kebir – the Moroccans defeat the Portuguese. King Sebastian of Portugal is killed in the battle, leaving his elderly uncle, Cardinal Henry, as his heir. This initiates a succession crisis in Portugal.
1693 – Date traditionally ascribed to Dom Perignon's invention of Champagne.
1704 – War of the Spanish Succession: Gibraltar is captured by an English and Dutch fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir George Rooke and allied with Archduke Charles.
1789 – In France members of the National Constituent Assembly take an oath to end feudalism and abandon their privileges.
1790 – A newly passed tariff act creates the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the United States Coast Guard).
1791 – The Treaty of Sistova is signed, ending the Ottoman-Habsburg wars.
1821 – Atkinson & Alexander publish the Saturday Evening Post for the first time as a weekly newspaper.
1824 – The Battle of Kos is fought between Turk and Greek forces.
1854 – The Hinomaru is established as the official flag to be flown from Japanese ships.
1863 – Matica slovenská, Slovakia's public-law cultural and scientific institution focusing on topics around the Slovak nation, is established in Martin.
1873 – Indian Wars: whilst protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, the United States 7th Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer clashes for the first time with the Sioux near the Tongue River; only one man on each side is killed.
1892 – The family of Lizzie Borden is found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts home.
1902 – The Greenwich foot tunnel under the River Thames opens.
1906 – Central Railway Station, Sydney opens.
1914 – World War I: Germany invades Belgium. In response, the United Kingdom declares war on Germany. The United States declare their neutrality.
1916 – World War I: Liberia declares war on Germany.
1924 – Diplomatic relations between Mexico and the Soviet Union are established.
1936 – Prime Minister of Greece Ioannis Metaxas suspends parliament and the Constitution and establishes the 4th of August Regime.
1944 – The Holocaust: a tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse where they find Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family.
1946 – An earthquake of magnitude 8.0 hits northern Dominican Republic. 100 are killed and 20,000 are left homeless.
1947 – The Supreme Court of Japan is established.
1954 – The Government of Pakistan approves Qaumi Tarana, written by Hafeez Jullundhry and composed by Ahmed Ghulamali Chagla, as the national anthem.
1958 – The Billboard Hot 100 is founded.
1964 – American civil rights movement: civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21.
1964 – Gulf of Tonkin Incident: U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy report coming under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin.
1965 – The Constitution of Cook Islands comes into force, giving the Cook Islands self-governing status within New Zealand.
1968 - Greatest King of all time is born!!!

1969 – Vietnam War: at the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, American representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuan Thuy begin secret peace negotiations. The negotiations will eventually fail.
1974 – A bomb explodes in the Italicus Express train at San Benedetto Val di Sambro, Italy, killing 12 people and wounding 22.
1975 – The Japanese Red Army takes more than 50 hostages at the AIA Building housing several embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The hostages include the U.S. consul and the Swedish chargé d’affaires. The gunmen win the release of five imprisoned comrades and fly with them to Libya.
1977 – US President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy.
1984 – The Republic of Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso.
1987 – The Federal Communications Commission rescinds the Fairness Doctrine which had required radio and television stations to present controversial issues "fairly".
1991 – The Greek cruise ship MTS Oceanos sinks off the Wild Coast of South Africa.
1993 – A federal judge sentences LAPD officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison for violating motorist Rodney King's civil rights.
1995 – Operation Storm begins in Croatia.
2002 – Soham murders: 10 year old school girls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells go missing from the town of Soham, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom.
2005 – Prime Minister Paul Martin announces that Michaëlle Jean will be Canada's 27th — and first black — Governor General.
2006 – A massacre, is carried out by Sri Lankan government forces, killing 17 employees of the French INGO Action Against Hunger (known internationally as Action Contre la Faim, or ACF).
2007 – NASA's Phoenix spaceship is launched.
2007 – Airport police officer María del Luján Telpuk discovers a suitcase containing the undeclared sum of US$800,000 as it goes through an x-ray machine in Aeroparque Jorge Newbery in Buenos Aires, sparking an international scandal involving Venezuela and Argentina known as "Maletinazo".

[Hypno-Bubba]

... in 1830, the plans for the city of Chicago are laid out.


Also today, all "Rednecks" rejoice as they celebrate the birthdays of Jeff Gordon and Billy Bob Thorton.

[Born Blitzed]

August 4th
Greatest King of all time is born!!!

I thought that was January 15th.
Or did you perhaps mean king_wesley?

[Ed The King]

The peasents are still revolting I see... 

Oh yes... and Happy Birthday Obama.

[Ed The King]

August 5th

642 – Battle of Maserfield – Penda of Mercia defeats and kills Oswald of Northumbria.
910 – The last major Danish army to raid England is defeated at the Battle of Tettenhall by the allied forces of Mercia and Wessex, led by King Edward the Elder and Earl Aethelred of Mercia.
1100 – Henry I is crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey.
1305 – William Wallace, who led the Scottish resistance against England, is captured by the English near Glasgow and transported to London where he is put on trial and executed.
1388 – The Battle of Otterburn, a border skirmish between the Scottish and the English in Northern England, is fought near Otterburn.
1583 – Sir Humphrey Gilbert establishes the first English colony in North America, at what is now St John's, Newfoundland.

1600 – The Gowrie Conspiracy against King James VI of Scotland (later to become King James I of England) takes place.
1620 – The Mayflower departs from Southampton, England on its first attempt to reach North America.
1689 – 1,500 Iroquois attack the village of Lachine in New France.

1716 – The Battle of Petrovaradin takes place.
1735 – Freedom of the press: New York Weekly Journal writer John Peter Zenger is acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, on the basis that what he had published was true.
1763 – Pontiac's War: Battle of Bushy Run – British forces led by Henry Bouquet defeat Chief Pontiac's Indians at Bushy Run.

1772 – The First Partition of Poland begins.
1781 – The Battle of Dogger Bank takes place.
1858 – Cyrus West Field and others complete the first transatlantic telegraph cable after several unsuccessful attempts. It will operate for less than a month.
1860 – Charles XV of Sweden of Sweden-Norway is crowned king of Norway in Trondheim.
1861 – American Civil War: in order to help pay for the war effort, the United States government levies the first income tax as part of the Revenue Act of 1861 (3% of all incomes over US $800; rescinded in 1872).
1861 – The United States Army abolishes flogging.
1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Baton Rouge – along the Mississippi River near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Confederate troops drive Union forces back into the city.
1864 – American Civil War: the Battle of Mobile Bay begins – at Mobile Bay near Mobile, Alabama, Admiral David Farragut leads a Union flotilla through Confederate defenses and seals one of the last major Southern ports.
1870 – Franco-Prussian War: the Battle of Spicheren is fought, resulting in a Prussian victory.
1874 – Japan launches its postal savings system, modeled after a similar system in the United Kingdom.
1882 – The Standard Oil of New Jersey is established.
1884 – The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty is laid on Bedloe's Island (now Liberty Island) in New York Harbor.
1888 – Bertha Benz drives from Mannheim to Pforzheim and back in the first long distance automobile trip, commemorated as the Bertha Benz Memorial Route since 2008.
1901 – Peter O'Connor sets the first IAAF recognised long jump world record of 24ft 11¾ins. The record will stand for 20 years.
1914 – World War I: the German minelayer Königin Luise lays a minefield about 40 miles of the Thames Estuary (Lowestoft). She is intercepted and sunk by the British light-cruiser HMS Amphion.
1914 – In Cleveland, Ohio, the first electric traffic light is installed.
1925 – Plaid Cymru is formed with the aim of disseminating knowledge of the Welsh language that was at the time in danger of dying out.
1940 – World War II: the Soviet Union formally annexes Latvia.
1944 – World War II: possibly the biggest prison breakout in history occurs as 545 Japanese POWs attempt to escape outside the town of Cowra, New South Wales, Australia.
1944 – Holocaust: Polish insurgents liberate a German labor camp in Warsaw, freeing 348 Jewish prisoners.
1949 – In Ecuador an earthquake destroys 50 towns and kills more than 6,000.
1949 – The Mann Gulch fire kills 13 firefighters (12 smokejumpers) in Montana.
1957 – American Bandstand, a show dedicated to the teenage "baby-boomers" by playing the songs and showing popular dances of the time, debuts on the ABC television network.
1960 – Burkina Faso, then known as Upper Volta, becomes independent from France.
1962 – Nelson Mandela is jailed. He would not be released until 1990.
1962, movie actress Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her home in Los Angeles

1963 – The United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union sign a nuclear test ban treaty.
1964 – Vietnam War: Operation Pierce Arrow – American aircraft from carriers USS Ticonderoga and USS Constellation bomb North Vietnam in retaliation for strikes against U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.
1969 – Mariner program: Mariner 7 makes its closest fly-by of Mars (3,524 kilometers).
1974 – Vietnam War: the U.S. Congress places a $1 billion dollar limit on military aid to South Vietnam.
1979 – In Afghanistan, Maoists undertake an attempted military uprising.
1981 – Ronald Reagan fires 11,359 striking air-traffic controllers who ignored his order for them to return to work.
1989 – General elections are held in Nicaragua with the Sandinista Front winning a majority.
1995 – The city of Knin, a significant Serb stronghold, is captured by Croatian forces during Operation Storm. The date is celebrated in Croatia as Victory Day.
2003 – A car bomb explodes in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta outside the Marriott Hotel killing 12 and injuring 150.