June 13

1514 - Henry Grace à Dieu, at over 1,000 tons the largest warship in the world at this time, built at the new Woolwich Dockyard in England, is dedicated.

1774 – Rhode Island becomes the first of Britain's North American colonies to ban the importation of slaves.

1777 – American Revolutionary War: Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette lands near Charleston, South Carolina, in order to help the Continental Congress to train its army.

1805 – Lewis and Clark Expedition: scouting ahead of the expedition, Meriwether Lewis and four companions sight the Great Falls of the Missouri River.

1893 – Grover Cleveland notices a rough spot in his mouth and on July 1 undergoes secret, successful surgery to remove a large, cancerous portion of his jaw; the operation was not revealed to the public until 1917, nine years after the president's death.

1917 – World War I: The deadliest German air raid on London during World War I is carried out by Gotha G bombers and results in 162 deaths, including 46 children, and 432 injuries.

1940 - The battleship USS North Carolina (BB-55), the most highly decorated American battleship of WWII (15 battle stars), is launched.

1944 – World War II: The Battle of Villers-Bocage - German tank ace Michael Wittmann ambushes elements of the British 7th Armoured Division, destroying up to fourteen tanks and fifteen personnel carriers, along with two anti-tank guns in a Tiger 1 tank.

1952 – Catalina affair: A Swedish Douglas DC-3 is shot down by a Soviet MiG-15 fighter.

1966 – The United States Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.

1967 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson nominates Solicitor-General Thurgood Marshall to become the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

1970 – "The Long and Winding Road" becomes The Beatles' last U.S. number one song.

1975 - Peter Frampton played the first of two nights at the Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, California. Recordings from these two shows were used as part of his No.1 double album 'Frampton Comes Alive'. It became the best-selling album of 1976, selling over 6 million copies in the US and Frampton Comes Alive! was voted "Album of the year" in the 1976 Rolling Stone readers poll. It remained on the charts for 97 weeks.

1977 – Convicted Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray is recaptured after escaping from prison three days before.

1981 – At the Trooping the Colour ceremony in London, a teenager, Marcus Sarjeant, fires six blank shots at Queen Elizabeth II.

1983 – Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the central Solar System when it passes beyond the orbit of Neptune (the farthest planet from the Sun at the time).

1992 - Billy Ray Cyrus started a 17-week run at No.1 on the US album chart with 'Some Gave All'. His debut album featured the world-wide breakthrough song 'Achy Breaky Heart', which was originally recorded as 'Don't Tell My Heart' by The Marcy Brothers on their 1991 self-titled album.

1994 – A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, blames recklessness by Exxon and Captain Joseph Hazelwood for the Exxon Valdez disaster, allowing victims of the oil spill to seek $15 billion in damages.

2000 – Italy pardons Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981.

2005 – A jury in Santa Maria, California acquits pop singer Michael Jackson of molesting 13-year-old Gavin Arvizo at his Neverland Ranch.

2010 – A capsule of the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa, containing particles of the asteroid 25143 Itokawa, returns to Earth.

2015 – A man opens fire at policemen outside the police headquarters in the Texas city of Dallas, while a bag containing a pipe bomb is also found. He was later shot dead by police.

Births

1786 – Winfield Scott; 1865 – W. B. Yeats; 1892 – Basil Rathbone; 1903 – Red Grange; 1913 – Ralph Edwards; 1918 – Ben Johnson; 1926 – Paul Lynde; 1943 – Malcolm McDowell; 1943 – Jim Guy Tucker; 1945 – Whitley Strieber; 1949 - Dennis Locorriere; 1951 – Richard Thomas ('John Boy Walton'), Stellan Skarsgård; 1953 – Tim Allen; 1959 – Lance Kinsey ("Police Academy"); 1962 – Ally Sheedy; 1968 – David Gray; 1969 – Laura Kightlinger; 1970 – Rivers Cuomo; 1973 – Tanner Foust; 1986 – Kat Dennings; 1986 – Ashley & Mary-Kate Olsen

Deaths

1231 – Anthony of Padua; 1979 – Darla Hood ("Our Gang"); 1986 – Benny Goodman; 1987 – Geraldine Page; 1993 – Deke Slayton; 2008 – Tim Russert; 2010 – Jimmy Dean; 2013 – David Deutsch; 2014 – Chuck Noll

June 14

Today is Flag Day in the United States.

There are 200 days remaining in the year.

There are 193 days till Christmas.

1158 – Munich is founded by Henry the Lion on the banks of the river Isar.

1381 – Richard II of England meets leaders of Peasants' Revolt on Blackheath. The Tower of London is stormed by rebels who enter without resistance.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: the Continental Army is established by the Continental Congress, marking the birth of the United States Army.

1777 – The Stars and Stripes is adopted by Congress as the Flag of the United States.

1789 – Mutiny on the Bounty: HMS Bounty mutiny survivors including and 18 others reach Timor after a nearly 7,400 km (4,600 mi) journey in an open boat.

Whiskey distilled from maize is first produced by American clergyman the Rev Elijah Craig (may God bless and keep him). It is named Bourbon because Rev Craig lived in Bourbon County, Kentucky.

1846 – Bear Flag Revolt begins: Anglo settlers in Sonoma, California, start a rebellion against Mexico and proclaim the California Republic.

1900 – Hawaii becomes United States territory.

1937 – Pennsylvania becomes the first (and only) state of the United States to celebrate Flag Day officially as a state holiday.

U.S. House of Representatives passes the Marihuana Tax Act.

1949 – Albert II, a rhesus monkey, rides a V-2 rocket to an altitude of 134 km (83 mi), thereby becoming the first monkey in space.

1951 – UNIVAC I is dedicated by the U.S. Census Bureau.

1959 – Disneyland Monorail System, the first daily operating monorail system in the Western Hemisphere, opens to the public in Anaheim, California.

1961 - Patsy Cline was seriously injured in a car accident. During her two month hospital stay, her song "I Fall to Pieces" gave the singer her first Country No.1 and also became a huge country-pop crossover hit.

1967 – Mariner program: Mariner 5 is launched towards Venus.

1970 - Derek and the Dominoes played their first gig when they appeared at London's Lyceum.

1982 – Falklands War: Argentine forces in the capital Stanley conditionally surrender to British forces.

1986 – The Mindbender accident happens at West Edmonton Mall. Three people died and one person was injured in the accident. This accident caused WEM to close the Mindbender for a few months for upgrades to it. Since 1986, the Mindbender has run accident free ever since.

Three fans die during an Ozzy Osbourne gig at Long Beach Arena, California after falling from a balcony.

1994 - Composer Henry Mancini dies aged 70.

2002 – Near-Earth asteroid 2002 MN misses the Earth by 75,000 miles (121,000 km), about one-third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

Births

1811 – Harriet Beecher Stowe; 1864 – Alois Alzheimer; 1909 – Burl Ives; 1916 – Dorothy McGuire; 1919 – Gene Barry; 1919 – Sam Wanamaker; 1928 – Ernesto 'Che' Guevara; 1931 – Marla Gibbs ('Florence' on "The Jeffersons"); 1931 – Junior Walker; 1932 – Joe Arpaio; 1945 – Rod Argent; 1946 – Donald Trump; 1952 – Pat Summitt; 1954 – Will Patton; 1956 – King Diamond, Fred Funk; 1958 – Eric Heiden; 1961 – Boy George; 1963 – Chris DeGarmo; 1966 – Traylor Howard; 1978 – Diablo Cody; 1982 – Lang Lang

Deaths

1801 – Benedict Arnold; 1825 – Pierre Charles L'Enfant; 1914 – Adlai Stevenson I; 1926 – Mary Cassatt; Jerome K. Jerome; 1936 – G. K. Chesterton; 1994 - Henry Mancini; 1997 – Richard Jaeckel; 2007 – Robin Olds; 2007 – Kurt Waldheim; 2009 – Bob Bogle (The Ventures)

June 15

763 BC – Assyrians record a solar eclipse that is later used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history.

1215 – King John of England puts his seal to the Magna Carta.

1219 – Northern Crusades: Danish victory at the Battle of Lyndanisse (modern-day Tallinn) establishes the Danish Duchy of Estonia. According to legend, this battle also marks the first use of the Dannebrog, the world's oldest national flag still in use, as the national flag of Denmark.

1300 – The city of Bilbao, Spain is founded.

1648 – Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft in the first such execution for the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1667 – The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys.

1752 – Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity (traditional date, the exact date is unknown).

1775 – American Revolutionary War: George Washington is appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.

1816 – At the Villa Diodati in the village of Cologny, Switzerland, Lord Byron reads Fantasmagoriana to his four house guests — Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori — and challenges each guest to write a ghost story, which culminates in Mary Shelley writing the novel Frankenstein, John Polidori writing the short story The Vampyre, and Byron writing an unfinished vampire novel Fragment of a Novel and the poem Darkness.

1836 – Arkansas is admitted as the 25th U.S. state.

1844 – Charles Goodyear receives a patent for vulcanization, a process to strengthen rubber.

1864 – Arlington National Cemetery is established when 200 acres (0.81 km2) around Arlington Mansion (formerly owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee) are officially set aside as a military cemetery by U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.

1877 – Henry Ossian Flipper becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy.

1878 – Eadweard Muybridge takes a series of photographs to prove that all four feet of a horse leave the ground when it runs; the study becomes the basis of motion pictures.

1896 – The deadliest tsunami in Japan's history kills more than 22,000 people.

1904 – A fire aboard the steamboat SS General Slocum in New York City's East River kills 1,000 people.

1916 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America, making them the only American youth organization with a federal charter.

1934 – The U.S. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is founded.

1944 – World War II: Battle of Saipan: The United States invade Japanese-occupied Saipan.

1970 – Charles Manson goes on trial for the Sharon Tate murders.

1991 – In the Philippines, Mount Pinatubo erupts in the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th Century. In the end, over 800 people die.

1992 – The United States Supreme Court rules in United States v. Álvarez-Machaín that it is permissible for the United States to forcibly extradite suspects in foreign countries and bring them to the USA for trial, without approval from those other countries.

1996 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonates a powerful truck bomb in the middle of Manchester, England, devastating the city centre and injuring 200 people.

Births

1330 – Edward, the Black Prince; 1908 – Sam Giancana; 1914 – Yuri Andropov; 1917 – Lash LaRue; 1930 – Victor Lundin (Star Trek's first Klingon); 1932 – Mario Cuomo; 1937 – Waylon Jennings; 1941 – Harry Nilsson; 1943 – Johnny Hallyday, Xaviera Hollander; 1946 – Noddy Holder; 1947 – John Hoagland; 1948 – Mike Holmgren; 1949 – Dusty Baker, Russell Hitchcock, Jim Varney (Ernest); 1951 – Steve Walsh; 1954 – Jim Belushi; 1955 – Julie Hagerty; 1957 – Brad Gillis; 1958 – Wade Boggs; 1963 – Helen Hunt; 1964 – Courteney Cox; 1969 – Ice Cube; 1972 – Andy Pettitte; 1973 – Neil Patrick Harris:devil:; 1980 – Mary Carey; 1984 – Tim Lincecum

Deaths

1849 – James K. Polk; 1968 – Wes Montgomery; 1989 – Victor French; 1991 – Happy Chandler; 1996 – Ella Fitzgerald; 2003 – Hume Cronyn; 2014 – Casey Kasem; 2015 – Kirk Kerkorian; 2015 – Mighty Sam McClain:devil:

June 16

Today is Bloomsday in Dublin, Ireland.

1487 – Battle of Stoke Field, the final engagement of the Wars of the Roses.

1774 – Foundation of Harrodsburg, Kentucky.

1858 – Abraham Lincoln delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois.

1883 – The Victoria Hall theatre panic in Sunderland, England kills 183 children.

1884 – The first purpose-built roller coaster, LaMarcus Adna Thompson's "Switchback Railway", opens in New York's Coney Island amusement park.

1903 – The Ford Motor Company is incorporated.

1904 – Irish author James Joyce begins a relationship with Nora Barnacle and subsequently uses the date to set the actions for his novel Ulysses; this date is now traditionally called "Bloomsday".

1911 – IBM is founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York.

A 772 gram stony meteorite strikes the earth near Kilbourn, Wisconsin (now Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin)damaging a barn.

1944 – At age 14, George Junius Stinney, Jr. becomes the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century.

1955 – In a futile effort to topple Argentine President Juan Perón, rogue aircraft pilots of the Argentine Navy drop several bombs upon an unarmed crowd demonstrating in favor of Perón in Buenos Aires, killing 364 and injuring at least 800.

1961 – Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union.

1963 – Soviet Space Program: Vostok 6 Mission: Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.

1965 - Bob Dylan recorded 'Like A Rolling Stone' at Columbia Recording Studios in New York City, in the sessions for the forthcoming 'Highway 61 Revisited' album.

1967 – The Monterey Pop Festival begins.

1977 – Oracle Corporation is incorporated in Redwood Shores, California, as Software Development Laboratories (SDL) by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates.

1980 - The Blues Brothers film starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd premiered in Chicago.

1981 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan awards the Congressional Gold Medal to Ken Taylor, Canada's former ambassador to Iran, for helping six Americans escape from Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979-81; he is the first foreign citizen bestowed the honor.

1982 - Donnie Van Zant of .38 Special was arrested on stage in Tulsa, Oklahoma, (a dry town) for drinking alcohol in a public place.

1994, Kristen Pfaff, bass player with Hole was found dead in her bathtub due to a heroin overdose, aged 26.

2010 – Bhutan becomes the first country to institute a total ban on tobacco.

2012 – The United States Air Force's robotic Boeing X-37B spaceplane returns to Earth after a classified 469-day orbital mission.

2013 - Black Sabbath established a new UK chart record for the longest gap between No.1 albums when their new release, 13 debuted at the top of the charts, 42 years and 8 months after their second album Paranoid reached No.1.

Births

1821 – Old Tom Morris; 1829 – Geronimo; 1890 – Stan Laurel; 1907 – Jack Albertson; 1917 – Katharine Graham (publisher The Washington Post); 1934 – Eileen Atkins; 1937 – Erich Segal (wrote "Love Story"); 1938 – Joyce Carol Oates, Charles B. Pierce (directed "The Town That Dreaded Sundown"(original), "The Legend of Boggy Creek", wrote "Sudden Impact"); 1939 – Billy "Crash" Craddock; 1941 – Lamont Dozier; 1942 – Eddie Levert; 1943 – Joan Van Ark; 1951 – Roberto 'Hands of Stone' Durán; 1952 – Gino Vannelli; 1955 – Laurie Metcalf; 1957 – Ian Buchanan; 1959 – The Ultimate Warrior; 1962 – Wally Joyner, Femi Kuti; 1968 - Gravdigr; 1969 – MC Ren; 1970 – Phil Mickelson; 1971 – Tupac Shakur; 1972 – John Cho ('Harold' of Harold & Kumar); 1973 – Eddie Cibrian; 1978 – Daniel Brühl

Deaths

1881 – Marie Laveau (voodoo priestess); 1930 – Ezra Fitch (Abercrombie & Fitch); 1930 – Elmer Ambrose Sperry (co-invented the gyrocompass, namesake of the subtender USS Sperry (AS-12), with Peter Hewitt to develop the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane, one of the first successful precursors of the UAV); 1939 – Chick Webb; 1958 – Imre Nagy; 1959 – George Reeves; 1970 – Brian Piccolo; 1977 – Wernher von Braun; 1979 – Nicholas Ray; 1982 – James Honeyman-Scott; 1999 – Screaming Lord Sutch; 2014 – Tony Gwynn

June 17

1462 – Vlad The Impaler attempts to assassinate Mehmed II (The Night Attack) forcing him to retreat from Wallachia.

1579 – Sir Francis Drake claims a land he calls Nova Albion (modern California) for England.

1631 – Mumtaz Mahal dies during childbirth. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, spends the next 17 years building her mausoleum, the Taj Mahal.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: Colonists inflict heavy casualties on British forces while losing the Battle of Bunker Hill.

1876 – American Indian Wars: Battle of the Rosebud: One thousand five hundred Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse beat back General George Crook's forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.

1877 – American Indian Wars: Battle of White Bird Canyon: The Nez Perce defeat the U.S. Cavalry at White Bird Canyon in the Idaho Territory.

1885 – The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor.

1939 – Last public guillotining in France: Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is guillotined in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison.

1948 – A Douglas DC-6 carrying United Airlines Flight 624 crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board.

1954 - Guitarist Danny Cedrone (guitar work on "Rock Around The Clock") falls down a flight of stairs, breaking his neck and dying instantly.

1965 - The Kinks and The Moody Blues made their US concert debut at the Academy of Music in New York City.

1972 – Watergate scandal: Five White House operatives are arrested for burgling the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in an attempt by some members of the Republican party to illegally wiretap the opposition.

1973 - Dolly Parton recorded 'I Will Always Love You' in RCA's Studio "B" in Nashville, Tennessee.

1978 - Andy Gibb became the first solo artist in the history of the US charts to have his first three releases reach No.1, when 'Shadow Dancing' hit the top of the chart. Spending seven weeks at No.1 it became the best selling single in the US in 1978.

1987 – With the death of the last individual of the species, the dusky seaside sparrow becomes extinct.

1994 – Following a televised low-speed highway chase, O. J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

2012 - Bruce Springsteen played his longest show when he turned in a three-hour-and-48-minute, 32-song, set at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid.

2015 – Nine people are killed in a mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Births

1704 – John Kay (no, not that one, this one invented the flying shuttle used in weaving); 1882 – Igor Stravinsky; 1898 – M. C. Escher; 1903 – Ruth Graves Wakefield (created the chocolate chip cookie); 1904 – Ralph Bellamy; 1910 – Red Foley; 1919 – Beryl Reid; 1943 – Newt Gingrich, Barry Manilow, Burt Rutan; 1945 – Tommy Franks; 1947 – Gregg Rolie, Paul Young; 1951 – Joe Piscopo; 1958 – Jello Biafra; 1960 – Thomas Haden Church; 1963 – Greg Kinnear; 1966 – Jason Patric; 1970 – Will Forte; 1980 – Venus Williams; 1987 – Kendrick Lamar

Deaths

1961 – Jeff Chandler; 1986 – Kate Smith; 2008 – Cyd Charisse; 2012 – Rodney King

June 18

1178 – Five Canterbury monks see what is possibly the Giordano Bruno crater being formed. It is believed that the current oscillations of the Moon's distance from the Earth (on the order of meters) are a result of this collision.

1429 – French forces under the leadership of Joan of Arc defeat the main English army under Sir John Fastolf at the Battle of Patay. This turns the tide of the Hundred Years' War.

1767 – Samuel Wallis, an English sea captain, sights Tahiti and is considered the first European to reach the island.

1778 – American Revolutionary War: British troops abandon Philadelphia.

1812 – War of 1812: The U.S. Congress declares war on Great Britain, Canada, and Ireland.

1815 – Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Waterloo results in the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte by the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher forcing him to abdicate the throne of France for the second and last time.

1873 – Susan B. Anthony is fined $100 for attempting to vote in the 1872 presidential election.

1923 – Checker Taxi puts its first taxi on the streets.

1930 – Groundbreaking ceremonies for the Franklin Institute are held.

1940 – Charles de Gaulle makes his Appeal of 18 June.

"Finest Hour" speech by Winston Churchill.

1948 – Columbia Records introduces the long-playing record album in a public demonstration at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.

1971 – President Richard Nixon declares that illegal drugs are "public enemy number one", which becomes popularized as the "War on Drugs".

1974 - Peter Hoorelbeke drummer with US band Rare Earth was arrested after a concert for throwing his drumsticks into the crowd.

1977, Johnny Rotten and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols were stabbed and beaten when they were attacked in a car park outside a London pub. They objected to the Pistols' anti-monarchist song 'God Save the Queen'. The next day, another member of the Pistols, [possibly Jamie Reed, there is a misprint in the article], was beaten by a gang armed with iron pipes.

1981 – The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk:devil:, the first operational aircraft initially designed around stealth technology, makes its first flight.

1983 – Space Shuttle program: STS-7, Astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.

Swiss band Yello ("Oh Yeah") released the first three- dimensional picture disc, complete with 3-D glasses.

1994 – The Troubles: Members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) attack a crowded pub with assault rifles in Loughinisland, Northern Ireland. Six Catholic civilians are killed and five wounded.

2010 - John Lennon's handwritten lyrics to The Beatles song 'A Day In The Life' sold for $1.2m (£810,000) at an auction at Sotheby's in New York.

Births

1854 – E. W. Scripps; 1877 – James Montgomery Flagg; 1886 – George Mallory; 1903 – Jeanette MacDonald; 1913 – Sammy Cahn, Robert Mondavi; 1914 – E. G. Marshall; 1915 – Red Adair; 1917 – Richard Boone; 1936 – Barack Obama Sr.; 1939 – Lou Brock; 1942 – Roger Ebert, Paul McCartney; 1944 – Sandy Posey; 1952 – Carol Kane; 1956 – Brian Benben; 1961 – Randy Spears (porn actor/director); 1976 – Blake Shelton

Deaths

1959 – Ethel Barrymore; 1982 – John Cheever; 1992 – Peter Allen; 2000 – Nancy Marchand (played 'Tony Soprano's' mother on "The Sopranos"); 2002 – Jack Buck; 2011 – Clarence Clemons

One of the courts martial I examined for my thesis was for desertion. The soldier had fallen for a woman in Philadelphia, and couldn't bear to leave when the troops abandoned the city.

June 19

Today is Juneteenth.

Today is also Father's Day (in the U.S.).

1269 – King Louis IX of France orders all Jews found in public without an identifying yellow badge to be fined ten livres of silver.

1586 – English colonists leave Roanoke Island, after failing to establish England's first permanent settlement in North America.

1846 – The first officially recorded, organized baseball game is played under Alexander Cartwright's rules on Hoboken, New Jersey's Elysian Fields with the New York Base Ball Club defeating the Knickerbockers 23–1. Cartwright umpired.

1862 – The U.S. Congress prohibits slavery in United States territories, nullifying Dred Scott v. Sandford.

1865 – Over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas, United States, are finally informed of their freedom. The anniversary is still officially celebrated in Texas and 41 other contiguous states as Juneteenth.

1910 – The first Father's Day is celebrated in Spokane, Washington.

1944 – World War II: First day of the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

1949 -- The first ever NASCAR race was held at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

1953 – Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed at Sing Sing, in New York.

1973 - Edgar Winter's US No.1 hit 'Frankenstein' was awarded a Gold record. Winter named the song because of how many cuts and patches were contained in the original studio tape.

1978 – Garfield, holder of the Guinness World Record for the world's most widely syndicated comic strip, makes its debut.

1980 - US singer Donna Summer became the first act to be signed by David Geffen to his new Geffen record label.

2009 – Mass riots involving over 10,000 people and 10,000 police officers break out in Shishou, China, over the dubious circumstances surrounding the death of a local chef.

2012 – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange requested asylum in London's Ecuadorian Embassy for fear of extradition to the US after publication of previously classified documents including footage of civilian killings by the US army.

2014 - Gerry Goffin, who penned chart-topping songs with his then-wife Carole King died at the age of 75 in Los Angeles. He wrote dozens of hits over two decades, including 'The Loco-Motion', 'Will You Love Me Tomorrow' and '(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman'. After their divorce in 1968, Goffin continued writing songs, including a hit for Whitney Houston 'Saving All My Love for You' in 1985.

Births

1623 – Blaise Pascal; 1816 – William H. Webb (founder Webb Institute); 1834 – Charles Spurgeon; 1865 – Dame May Whitty; 1877 – Charles Coburn; 1893 – Madeleine Astor (Titanic survivor); 1896 – Wallis Simpson; 1897 – Moe Howard; 1902 – Guy Lombardo; 1903 – Lou Gehrig (39 years later he will be diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, now commonly known in the United States as "Lou Gehrig's Disease"); 1910 – Sydney Allard (Allard Motor Company Limited); 1910 – Abe Fortas; 1914 – Alan Cranston, Lester Flatt; 1921 – Louis Jourdan; 1928 – Nancy Marchand (played Tony Soprano's mother); 1930 – Gena Rowlands; 1938 – Wahoo McDaniel; 1940 – Shirley Muldowney; 1945 – Aung San Suu Kyi; 1947 – Salman Rushdie; 1950 – Ann Wilson (Heart); 1953 – Simon Wright; 1954 – Kathleen Turner; 1956 – Doug Stone; 1957 – Jean Rabe; 1959 – Mark DeBarge; 1962 – Paula Abdul; 1964 – Boris Johnson; 1969 – Lara Spencer; 1972 – Poppy Montgomery, Robin Tunney; 1976 – Scott Avett (The Avett Brothers); 1978 – Zoe Saldana; 1983 – Macklemore

Deaths

1937 – J. M. Barrie; 1953 – Ethel Rosenberg, Julius Rosenberg; 1966 – Ed Wynn; 1975 – Sam Giancana; 1995 – Peter Townsend (no, not that one, he's a 'Townshend'); 2010 – Manute Bol; 2012 – Richard Lynch; 2013 – James Gandolfini; 2013 – Slim Whitman; 2015 – James Salter

June20

Today is the Summer Solstice, in the Northern Hemisphere, and, Winter Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere.

451 – Battle of Chalons: Flavius Aetius battles Attila the Hun. After the battle, which was inconclusive, Attila retreats, causing the Romans to interpret it as a victory.

1248 – The University of Oxford receives its Royal charter.

1631 – The sack of Baltimore: The Irish village of Baltimore is attacked by Algerian pirates.

1782 – The U.S. Congress adopts the Great Seal of the United States.

1819 – The U.S. vessel SS Savannah arrives at Liverpool, United Kingdom. It is the first steam-propelled vessel to cross the Atlantic, although most of the journey is made under sail.

1837 – Queen Victoria succeeds to the British throne.

1840 – Samuel Morse receives the patent for the telegraph.

1863 – West Virginia is admitted as the 35th U.S. state.

1877 – Alexander Graham Bell installs the world's first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

1893 – Lizzie Borden is acquitted of the axe murders of her father and stepmother.

1948 – Toast of the Town, later The Ed Sullivan Show, makes its television debut.

1963 – The so-called "red telephone" link is established between the Soviet Union and the United States following the Cuban Missile Crisis.

1969 - David Bowie records 'Space Oddity' at Trident Studios London. The track went on to become a UK No.1 when re-released in 1975.

1972 – Watergate scandal: An 18½-minute gap appears in the tape recording of the conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and his advisers regarding the recent arrests of his operatives while breaking into the Watergate complex.

1975 – The film Jaws is released in the United States, becoming the highest-grossing film of that time and starting the trend of films known as "summer blockbusters".

1979 – ABC News correspondent Bill Stewart is shot dead by a Nicaraguan soldier under the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The murder is caught on tape and sparks an international outcry against the regime.

1982 – The Argentine Corbeta Uruguay base on Southern Thule surrenders to Royal Marine commandos in the final action of the Falklands War.

1990 – The 7.4 Mw Manjil–Rudbar earthquake affects northern Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme), killing 35,000–50,000, and injuring 60,000–105,000.

1991 – The German Bundestag votes to move the capital from Bonn back to Berlin.

2001 – Andrea Yates, in an attempt to save her young children from Satan, drowns all five of them in a bathtub in Houston, Texas.

2003 – The Wikimedia Foundation is founded in St. Petersburg, Florida.:cheerldr::celebrat:

2004 - Organizers at a Paul McCartney show in Petersburg, Russia, hired three jets to spray dry ice into the clouds so it wouldn't rain during the concert. The gig was McCartney's 3,000th concert appearance. He had performed 2,535 gigs with the Quarrymen and The Beatles, 140 gigs with Wings and 325 solo shows.

Births

1905 – Lillian Hellman; 1907 – Jimmy Driftwood; 1909 – Errol Flynn; 1924 – Chet Atkins; 1925 – Audie Murphy; 1928 – Martin Landau; 1933 – Danny Aiello; 1935 – Len Dawson; 1937 – Jerry Keller; 1940 – John Mahoney ("Frasier"'s father); 1941 – Stephen Frears; 1942 – Brian Wilson; 1945 – Anne Murray; 1946 – Bob Vila; 1949 – Alan Longmuir (Bay City Rollers), Lionel Richie; 1950 – Nouri al-Maliki; 1952 – John Goodman, Larry Riley; 1954 – Michael Anthony (bassist Van Halen); 1957 – Koko B. Ware; 1958 – Ron Hornaday, Jr. (race car driver); 1960 – John Taylor; 1967 – Nicole Kidman; 1967 – Dan Tyminski (singer of "Man Of Constant Sorrow"; 1968 – Robert Rodriguez; 1971 – Josh Lucas, Twiggy Ramirez (bassist 'Marilyn Manson'); 1978 – Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson; 1983 – Darren Sproles

Deaths

1875 - Joe Meek; 1945 – Bruno Frank; 1947 – Bugsy Siegel; 1972 – Howard Johnson; 2012 – LeRoy Neiman

re: 1248 – The University of Oxford receives its Royal charter.

Though that was when it received its charter, iit existed for a long time before as a place of learning and teaching.

I went looking for the above and also found this little titbit which i did not know:

I did not know that's how Cambridge was founded.

June 21

1734 – In Montreal in New France, a slave known by the French name of Marie-Joseph Angélique is put to death, having been convicted of setting the fire that destroyed much of the city.

1749 – Halifax, Nova Scotia, is founded.

1854 – The first Victoria Cross is awarded during the bombardment of Bomarsund in the Åland Islands.

1877 – The Molly Maguires, ten Irish immigrants convicted of murder, are hanged at the Schuylkill County and Carbon County, Pennsylvania prisons.

1898 – The United States captures Guam from Spain.

1900 – Boxer Rebellion. China formally declares war on the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Japan, as an edict issued from the Empress Dowager Cixi.

1915 – The U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decision in Guinn v. United States 238 US 347 1915, striking down Oklahoma grandfather clause legislation which had the effect of denying the right to vote to blacks.

1919 – Admiral Ludwig von Reuter scuttles the German fleet in Scapa Flow, Orkney. The nine sailors killed are the last casualties of World War I.

1942 – World War II: A Japanese submarine surfaces near the Columbia River in Oregon, firing 17 shells at nearby Fort Stevens in one of only a handful of attacks by Japan against the United States mainland.

* 1964 – Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner, are murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi.

1966 - Reg Calvert manager of The Fortunes, Screaming Lord Sutch and the owner of offshore pirate radio station Radio City was shot dead by business rival William Oliver Smedley during a confrontation. (Smedley was the owner of pirate station Radio Caroline). Smedley was later cleared of the murder on grounds of self defense.

Jimmy Page made his live debut with The Yardbirds at The Marquee Club in London.

1975 - Elton John, The Beach Boys, Joe Walsh, Rufus, and The Eagles all appeared in front of 120,000 fans at Wembley Stadium, London. Tickets cost £3.50 ($5.95).

Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore quit Deep Purple to form his own group, Rainbow.

1982 – John Hinckley is found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

2001 – A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, indicts 13 Saudis and a Lebanese in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen.

John Lee Hooker, American blues singer and guitarist died in his sleep, aged 83.

* 2005 – Edgar Ray Killen, who had previously been acquitted for the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner, is convicted of manslaughter 41 years afterwards (the case had been reopened in 2004).

2009 – Greenland assumes self-rule.

Births

1639 – Increase Mather; 1850 – Daniel Carter Beard (co-founded the Boy Scouts of America); 1890 – Frank S. Land (founded DeMolay International; 1896 – Charles Momsen (invented the Momsen lung); 1903 – Al Hirschfeld; 1905 – Jean-Paul Sartre; 1921 – Judy Holliday, Jane Russell; 1925 – Maureen Stapleton; 1932 – Lalo Schifrin; 1933 – Bernie Kopell ('Doc' on The Love Boat); 1938 – Don Black (co-wrote theme songs for "Thunderball", "Diamonds Are Forever" and "The Man with the Golden Gun"); 1940 – Mariette Hartley; 1941 – Joe Flaherty; 1944 – Ray Davies; 1947 – Meredith Baxter(mom on "Family Ties"), Michael Gross (dad on "Family Ties"):3_eyes:; 1947 – Joey Molland (Badfinger); 1948 – Don Airey (keyboard); 1950 – Joey Kramer; 1951 – Nils Lofgren; 1953 – Benazir Bhutto; 1957 – Berkeley Breathed; 1959 – Kathy Mattea; 1961 – Kip Winger; 1964 – Doug Savant; 1965 – Lana Wachowski (formerly Larry, bro sis of Lilly (formerly Andy):3_eyes:; 1966 – Gretchen Carlson, Mancow Muller; 1967 – Jim Breuer; 1967 – Pierre Omidyar (founder eBay), Carrie Preston; 1973 – Juliette Lewis; 1979 – Chris Pratt; 1983 – Edward Snowden; 1985 – Lana Del Rey

Deaths

1527 – Niccolò Machiavelli; 1582 – Oda Nobunaga; 1591 – Aloysius Gonzaga (namesake of Gonzaga University); 1652 – Inigo Jones; 1661 – Andrea Sacchi; 1874 – Anders Jonas Ångström; 1876 – Antonio López de Santa Anna (Remember the Alamo?); 1908 – Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; 1940 – Smedley Butler (at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history); 1964 – James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner; 1985 – Hector Boyardee (founded Chef Boyardee); 1987 – Earl 'Madman' Muntz; 2001 – John Lee Hooker; 2001 – Carroll O'Connor; 2003 – Jason Moran; 2003 – Leon Uris; 2007 – Bob Evans; 2008 – Scott Kalitta (drag racer, son of drag racer Connie Kalitta, the wreck that killed him resulted in NHRA shortening the track to 1,000 feet); 2012 – Richard Adler; 2014 – Jimmy C. Newman

On this day in history Gravdigr's computer decided to take a shit 9/10s of the way through todays post.

So...

Nothing happened today. No one was born. No one died.

Sorry.

I'm sorry no one died... except your computer, I am sorry about that. :(

July 22:

1815
Napoleon abdicated his throne for the second time after his defeat at Waterloo.

1870
The U.S. Justice Department was created.

1874
Dr. Andrew Still became the first to practice osteopathy.

1943
W.E.B. DuBois became the first black member of the National Institute of Letters.

1944
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the G.I. Bill of Rights.

1969
Singer-actress Judy Garland died.

1987
Actor-dancer-singer Fred Astaire died.

2011
Legendary Boston crime boss,James "Whitey" Bulger is found and arrested by federal authorities in Santa Monica, Calif.

It hiccupped just enough to lose the arm long post I was almost finished with.

That noise you probably heard was me screaming "Sonofabitch!!".

Helluva thang, helluva thang...




ETA: Thx, UT.

It's not as good as yours but a faithful reproduction

Oh Grav, that totally sucks. Nice one UT for keeping the torch lit:)

June 23

Today is International Widows Day.

1314 – First War of Scottish Independence: The Battle of Bannockburn begins.

1611 – The mutinous crew of Henry Hudson's fourth voyage sets Henry, his son and seven loyal crew members adrift in an open boat in what is now Hudson Bay; they are never heard from again.

1683 – William Penn signs a friendship treaty with Lenni Lenape Indians in Pennsylvania.

1757 – Battle of Plassey: Three thousand British troops under Robert Clive defeat a 50,000-strong Indian army under Siraj ud-Daulah at Plassey.

1780 – American Revolution: Battle of Springfield fought in and around Springfield, New Jersey.

1810 – John Jacob Astor forms the Pacific Fur Company.

1868 – Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for an invention he called the "Type-Writer."

1894 – The International Olympic Committee is founded at the Sorbonne in Paris, at the initiative of Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

1926 – The College Board administers the first SAT exam.

1931 – Wiley Post and Harold Gatty take off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, New York in an attempt to circumnavigate the world in a single-engine plane.

1942 – The first selections for the gas chamber at Auschwitz take place on a train full of Jews from Paris.

Germany's latest fighter aircraft, a Focke-Wulf Fw 190, is captured intact when it mistakenly lands at RAF Pembrey in Wales.

1943 – The British destroyers HMS Eclipse and HMS Laforey sink the Italian submarine Ascianghi in the Mediterranean after she torpedoes the cruiser HMS Newfoundland.

1946 – The 1946 Vancouver Island earthquake strikes Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

1959 – Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs is released after only nine years in prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany where he resumes a scientific career.

1960 – The United States Food and Drug Administration declares Enovid to be the first officially approved combined oral contraceptive pill in the world.

1969 – Warren E. Burger is sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court by retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren.

1970 - Chubby Checker was arrested in Niagara Falls after police discovered marijuana and other drugs in his car.

1973 – A fire at a house in Hull, England which kills a six-year-old boy is passed off as an accident; it later emerges as the first of 26 deaths by fire caused over the next seven years by arsonist Peter Dinsdale.

1975 - During his 'Welcome To My Nightmare' tour in Vancouver, Canada, Alice Cooper falls from the stage and breaks six ribs.

1982 – Chinese American Vincent Chin dies in a coma after being beaten in Highland Park, Michigan on June 19, by two auto workers who had mistaken him for Japanese and who were angry about the success of Japanese auto companies.

1985 – A terrorist bomb aboard Air India Flight 182 brings the Boeing 747 down off the coast of Ireland killing all 329 aboard.

1990 - Buddy Holly's Gibson acoustic guitar sold for £139,658 ($237,419) in a Sotheby's auction. The guitar was in a tooled leather case made by Holly himself.

2010 - [Then] 62-year-old Gregg Allman underwent a successful liver transplant operation at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.

2013 – Nik Wallenda becomes the first man to successfully walk across the Grand Canyon on a tight rope.

2014 – The last of Syria's declared chemical weapons are shipped out for destruction.

Births

1894 – Alfred Kinsey; 1912 – Alan Turing; 1923 – Elroy Schwartz; 1925 – Art Modell; 1927 – Bob Fosse; 1929 – June Carter Cash; 1936 – Richard Bach; 1940 – Wilma Rudolph; 1940 – Stu Sutcliffe; 1947 – Bryan Brown; 1955 – Glenn Danzig; 1956 – Randy Jackson; 1957 – Frances McDormand; 1964 – Joss Whedon; 1966 – Chico DeBarge; 1972 – Selma Blair; 1974 – Joel Edgerton; 1975 – KT Tunstall; 1977 – Jason Mraz; 1979 – LaDainian Tomlinson; 1980 – Melissa Rauch; 1984 – Duffy

Deaths

79 – Vespasian; 1970 – Roscoe Turner; 1995 – Jonas Salk; 1997 – Betty Shabazz; 1998 – Maureen O'Sullivan; 2006 – Aaron Spelling; 2009 – Ed McMahon; 2011 – Peter Falk; 2013 – Bobby 'Blue' Bland, Frank Kelso; 2015 – Dick Van Patten

Damn, so soon, now I have to run out and make a widow. :haha:

"1982 – Chinese American Vincent Chin dies in a coma after being beaten in Highland Park, Michigan on June 19, by two auto workers who had mistaken him for Japanese and who were angry about the success of Japanese auto companies."

There is all kinds of stupid in this story.

June 24

1340 – Hundred Years' War: Battle of Sluys: The French fleet is almost completely destroyed by the English fleet commanded in person by King Edward III.

1374 – A sudden outbreak of St. John's Dance causes people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion.

1497 – John Cabot lands in North America at Newfoundland leading the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings.

1717 – The Premier Grand Lodge of England, the first Masonic Grand Lodge in the world (now the United Grand Lodge of England), is founded in London.

1880 – First performance of O Canada, the song that would become the national anthem of Canada.

1916 – Mary Pickford becomes the first female film star to sign a million-dollar contract.

1938 – Pieces of a meteor, estimated to have weighed 450 metric tons when it hit the Earth's atmosphere and exploded, land near Chicora, Pennsylvania.

1947 – Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting, near Mount Rainier, Washington.

1949 – The first television western, Hopalong Cassidy, is aired on NBC starring William Boyd.

1957 – In Roth v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment.

1967 – The worst caving disaster in British history takes six lives at Mossdale Caverns.

1999 - Eric Clapton put 100 of his guitars up for auction at Christie's in New York City to raise money for his drug rehab clinic, the Crossroads Centre in Antigua. His 1956 Fender Stratocaster, named Brownie, which was used to record the electric version of ‘Layla’, sold for a record $497,500. The auction helped raise nearly $5 million for the clinic.

2002 – The Igandu train disaster in Tanzania kills 281 people, the worst train accident in African history.

2004, A Fender Stratocaster that Eric Clapton nicknamed 'Blackie' sold at a Christie's auction for $959,500 (£564,412) in New York, making it the most expensive guitar in the world. The proceeds of the sale went towards Clapton's Crossroads addiction clinic, which he founded in 1998.

2010 – John Isner of the United States defeats Nicolas Mahut of France at Wimbledon, in the longest match in professional tennis history.

2012 – Lonesome George, the last known individual of Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii, a subspecies of the Galápagos tortoise, dies.

2013, Former Devo drummer Alan Myers died aged 58 in Los Angeles, California, following a long bout with cancer. Myers drummed for Devo between 1976 and 1986.

Births

1788 – Thomas Blanchard (pioneered the assembly line, and interchangeable parts); 1813 – Henry Ward Beecher; 1842 – Ambrose Bierce; 1893 – Roy O. Disney (walt's brother); 1895 – Jack Dempsey; 1901 – Chuck Taylor (namesake of Chuck Taylor athletic shoes); 1904 – Phil Harris (no, not the captain of the Cornelia Marie); 1911 – Juan Manuel Fangio; 1915 – Fred Hoyle (coined the term "big bang"); 1919 – Al Molinaro ('Big Al' on "Happy Days"); 1922 – Jack Carter; 1929 – Carolyn S. Shoemaker; 1930 – William Bernard Ziff, Jr. (Ziff Davis); 1931 – Billy Casper; 1941 – Charles Whitman; 1944 – Jeff Beck; 1944 – Chris Wood; 1945 – George Pataki; 1946 – Robert Reich; 1947 – Mick Fleetwood, Peter Weller; 1950 – Nancy Allen ("RoboCop"); 1960 – Juli Inkster; 1967 – Sherry Stringfield ("ER"); 1979 – Mindy Kaling; 1986 – Solange Knowles

Deaths

1519 – Lucrezia Borgia; 1908 – Grover Cleveland; 1987 – Jackie Gleason; 1997 – Brian Keith; 2005 – Paul Winchell; 2007 – Chris Benoit; 2013 – Jackie Fargo; 2014 – Eli Wallach

Devo made a stunning appearance on Saturday Night live in it heyday. So a sign for the Devon exist on Route 202 would constantly have the number spray painted out for the next 20 years.

Just passed that sign last month. It is no longer modified by spray paint. Maybe he also died.

I think I remember that appearance. I would have been fairly young. Maybe 1978, or so?



ETA: Hey, I was right.

For a change.:cheerldr:

June 25

1876 – Battle of the Little Bighorn and the death of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer.

1906 – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania millionaire Harry Thaw (<---great read, btw) shoots and kills prominent architect Stanford White.

1910 – The United States Congress passes the Mann Act, which prohibits interstate transport of females for “immoral purposes”; the ambiguous language would be used to selectively prosecute people for years to come.

Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Firebird premiers in Paris, bringing him to prominence as a composer.

1923 – Capt. Lowell H. Smith and Lt. John P. Richter perform the first ever aerial refueling, in a DH.4B biplane.

1944 – The final page of the comic Krazy Kat is published, exactly two months after its author George Herriman died.

1947 – The Diary of a Young Girl (better known as The Diary of Anne Frank) is published.

1950 – The Korean War begins with the invasion of South Korea by North Korea.

1960 – Two cryptographers working for the United States National Security Agency left for vacation to Mexico, and from there defected to the Soviet Union.

1966 - Jackie Wilson was arrested for inciting a riot and refusing to obey a police order at a nightclub in Port Arthur, Texas. Wilson had a crowd of 400 whipped into a frenzy and refused to stop singing when requested to do so by police. He was later convicted of drunkenness and fined $30.

1969 - The Hollies recorded 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother'. The ballad was written by Bobby Scott and Bob Russell (who was dying of cancer of the lymph nodes). The pair met in person only three times, but managed to collaborate on the song. The track featured Elton John on piano.

1978 – The rainbow flag representing gay pride is flown for the first time during the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade.

1981 – Microsoft is restructured to become an incorporated business in its home state of Washington.

1984 – American singer Prince releases his most successful studio album Purple Rain.

1996 – The Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia kills 19 U.S. servicemen.

2006 - Nicole Kidman married her singer boyfriend Keith Urban at a ceremony in Sydney, Australia.

Births

1886 – Henry H. 'Hap' Arnold; 1900 – Louis Mountbatten; 1903 – George Orwell; 1924 – Sidney Lumet; 1925 – June Lockhart; 1928 – Peyo (created The Smurfs); 1933 – James Meredith; 1939 - Harold Melvin; 1945 – Carly Simon; 1947 – Jimmie Walker; 1954 – David Paich, Sonia Sotomayor; 1956 – Anthony Bourdain; 1961 – Ricky Gervais; 1963 – George Michael; 1966 – Dikembe Mutombo; 1972 - Mike Kroeger (Nickelback)

Deaths

1218 – Simon de Montfort; 1533 – Mary Tudor; 1876 – James Calhoun, Boston Custer, George Armstrong Custer, Thomas Custer, Myles Keogh (<---all died at the Little Big Horn); 1906 – Stanford White; 1916 – Thomas Eakins; 1958 – Alfred Noyes; 1959 – Charles Starkweather; 1976 – Johnny Mercer; 1977 – Olave Baden-Powell; 1979 – Dave Fleischer; 1987 – Boudleaux Bryant; 1988 - Hillel Slovak (Red Hot Chili Peppers); 1997 – Jacques Cousteau; 2005 – John Fiedler ('Lawyer Daggett' in "True Grit"); 2009 – Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson; 2015 – Lou Butera, Patrick Macnee

June 26

4 – Augustus adopts Tiberius.

1483 – Richard III becomes King of England.

1718 – Alexei Petrovich, Tsarevich of Russia, Peter the Great's son, mysteriously dies after being sentenced to death by his father for plotting against him.

1740 – A combined force of Spanish, free blacks and allied Indians defeat a British garrison at the Siege of Fort Mose near St. Augustine (Florida) during the War of Jenkins' Ear.

1843 – Treaty of Nanking comes into effect, Hong Kong Island is ceded to the British "in perpetuity".

1870 – The Christian holiday of Christmas is declared a federal holiday in the United States.

1906 – The first Grand Prix motor racing event held.

1917 – The American Expeditionary Forces begin to arrive in France. They will first enter combat four months later.

1918 – Allied Forces under John J. Pershing and James Harbord defeat Imperial German Forces under Wilhelm, German Crown Prince in the Battle of Belleau Wood.

1936 – Initial flight of the Focke-Wulf Fw 61, the first practical helicopter.

1942 – The first flight of the Grumman F6F Hellcat.

1948 – The first supply flights are made in response to the Berlin Blockade.

1963 – U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.

1973 - Rolling Stone Keith Richards and his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg were arrested at their home in Chelsea, London on drugs and gun charges.

1974 – The Universal Product Code (UPC) is scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley's chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.

Cher divorced Sonny Bono after 10 years of marriage.

1975 – Two FBI agents and a member of the American Indian Movement are killed in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Leonard Peltier is later convicted of the murders in a controversial trial.

1977 – The Yorkshire Ripper kills 16-year-old shop assistant Jayne MacDonald in Leeds, changing public perception of the killer as she is the first victim who is not a prostitute.

Elvis Presley performs what will be his final concert in Indianapolis. The last two songs he performed were ‘Hurt’ and ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water.’

1997 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the Communications Decency Act violates the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

2003 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Lawrence v. Texas that gender-based sodomy laws are unconstitutional.

2012 – The Waldo Canyon fire descends into the Mountain Shadows neighborhood in Colorado Springs burning 347 homes in a matter of hours and killing two people.

2015 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 5–4, that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Epic shitstorm ensues.

Births

1689 – Edward Holyoke; 1730 – Charles Messier; 1819 – Abner Doubleday; 1892 – Pearl S. Buck; 1898 – Willy Messerschmitt, Chesty Puller (the most decorated Marine in American history:devil:); 1903 – Big Bill Broonzy; 1904 – Peter Lorre; 1908 – Salvador Allende; 1909 – Colonel Tom Parker; 1911 – Babe Didrikson Zaharias; 1915 – Paul Castellano; 1930 – Jackie Fargo; 1934 – Dave Grusin; 1938 – Billy Davis, Jr.; 1955 – Mick Jones; 1956 – Chris Isaak; 1961 – Greg LeMond; 1963 – Richard Garfield (created Magic: The Gathering); 1970 – Paul Thomas Anderson, Irv Gotti, Sean Hayes, Chris O'Donnell, Nick Offerman; 1971 – Max Biaggi; 1973 – Gretchen Wilson; 1974 – Derek Jeter; 1980 – Jason Schwartzman, Michael Vick; 1993 – Ariana Grande

Deaths

363 – Julian; 1541 – Francisco Pizarro; 1784 – Caesar Rodney; 1810 – Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (co-invented the hot air balloon); 1992 – Buddy Rogers; 1993 – Roy Campanella; 1996 – Veronica Guerin; 2003 – Strom Thurmond (And there was much rejoicing.); 2007 – Liz Claiborne; 2012 – Nora Ephron; 2013 – Byron Looper; 2014 – Howard Baker, Rollin King (co-founded Southwest Airlines)

June 27

1760 – Cherokee warriors defeat British forces at the Battle of Echoee near present-day Otto, North Carolina during the Anglo-Cherokee War.

1844 – Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, and his brother Hyrum Smith, are killed by a mob at the Carthage, Illinois jail.

1885 - Chichester Bell and Charles Tainter applied for a patent on their invention the gramophone.

1898 – The first solo circumnavigation of the globe is completed by Joshua Slocum from Briar Island, Nova Scotia.

1905 – During the Russo-Japanese War, sailors start a mutiny aboard the Russian battleship Potemkin.

1941 – Romanian authorities launch one of the most violent pogroms in Jewish history in the city of Iași, resulting in the murder of at least 13,266 Jews.

1950 – The United States decides to send troops to fight in the Korean War.

1967 - Mick Jagger was found guilty of illegal possession of two drugs found in his jacket at a party given by Keith Richards. He was remanded overnight at Lewes jail, England (prison number 7856). Jagger requested books on Tibet and modern art and two packs of Benson & Hedges cigarettes.

1968 - Elvis Presley appeared on an NBC TV show that was billed as his "comeback special". The show featured the king performing on a small, square stage, surrounded by a mostly female audience. Presley was outfitted in black leather and performed many of his early hits.

1970 - The newly formed Queen featuring Freddie Mercury (possibly still known as Freddie Bulsara) on vocals, guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and Mike Grose on bass played their first gig at Truro City Hall, Cornwall, England. They were billed as Smile, Brian and Roger's previous band, for whom the booking had been made originally. Original material at this time included an early version of 'Stone Cold Crazy'.

1971 – After only three years in business, rock promoter Bill Graham closes the Fillmore East in New York, New York.

1976 – Air France Flight 139 (Tel Aviv-Athens-Paris) is hijacked en route to Paris by the PLO and redirected to Entebbe, Uganda.

1980 – Italian Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870 mysteriously explodes in mid air while en route from Bologna to Palermo, killing all 81 on board. Also known in Italy as the Ustica disaster.

Led Zeppelin appeared at Messehalle, Nuremberg, Germany during their last ever tour. After the group had played just three songs, drummer John Bonham collapsed on stage, causing the remainder of the show to be cancelled.

1985 – U.S. Route 66 is officially removed from the United States Highway System.

1987 - Whitney Houston became the first woman in US history to enter the album chart at No.1, with 'Whitney' she also became the first woman to top the singles chart with four consecutive releases when 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody' hit No.1.

1991 - Carlos Santana was arrested at Houston Airport when officials found cannabis in his luggage.

1994 - Aerosmith became the first major band to let fans download a full new track free from the internet.

:3_eyes: 2012 - The chief medical officer of Russia said that The Beatles were to blame for the country's drug problem. Yevgeny Bryun, the nation's medical chief, said that the country's youth first got introduced to the idea of drug-taking when The Beatles traveled to India to "expand their minds". Bryun added that it was after this news entered public consciousness that people in Russia realized you could make money from the sale of drugs. When business then realized it was possible to make money from this, goods associated with pleasure, that was when the growth in the demand for drugs started.

2015 – A midair explosion from flammable powder at a recreational water park in Taiwan injures at least 510 people with about 183 in serious condition in intensive care.

Births

1838 – Paul Mauser; 1880 – Helen Keller; 1907 – John McIntire; 1909 – Billy Curtis (the midget 'Mordecai' in "High Plains Drifter"); 1913 – Willie Mosconi; 1925 – Doc Pomus; 1927 – Bob Keeshan (Capt. Kangaroo); 1930 – Ross Perot; 1938 – Bruce Babbitt; 1945 – Joey Covington; 1949 – Vera Wang; 1951 – Julia Duffy; 1956 – Ted Haggard (idjit), Sultan bin Salman Al Saud; 1959 – Lorrie Morgan; 1963 – Johnny Benson, Jr.; 1966 – J. J. Abrams; 1975 – Tobey Maguire

Deaths

1839 – Ranjit Singh; 1844 – Hyrum Smith, Joseph Smith; 1996 – Albert R. Broccoli (producer James Bond films); 2001 – Jack Lemmon; 2002 – John Entwistle (bassist The Who); 2005 – Shelby Foote; 2009 – Gale Storm; 2014 – Bobby Womack; 2015 – Chris Squire (bassist Yes)

June 28

1461 – Edward IV is crowned King of England.

1776 – Thomas Hickey, Continental Army private and bodyguard to General George Washington, is hanged for mutiny and sedition.

1838 – Coronation of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.

1846 – Adolphe Sax patents the saxophone.

1880 – The Australian bushranger Ned Kelly is captured at Glenrowan.

1894 – Labor Day becomes an official US holiday.

1896 – An explosion in the Newton Coal Company's Twin Shaft Mine in Pittston, Pennsylvania results in a massive cave-in that kills 58 miners.

1902 – The U.S. Congress passes the Spooner Act, authorizing President Theodore Roosevelt to acquire rights from Colombia for the Panama Canal.

1914 – Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are assassinated in Sarajevo by Bosnia Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip, the casus belli of World War I.

1919 – The Treaty of Versailles is signed, ending the state of war between Germany and the Allies of World War I.

1926 – Mercedes-Benz is formed by Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz merging their two companies.

1950 – Korean War: Seoul is captured by North Korean troops.

Suspected communist sympathizers, argued to be between 100,000 and 200,000 are executed in the Bodo League massacre.

Packed with its own refugees fleeing Seoul and leaving their 5th Division stranded, South Korean forces blow up the Hangang Bridge in an attempt to slow North Korea's offensive.

North Korean Army conducts Seoul National University Hospital massacre.

1969 – Stonewall riots begin in New York City, marking the start of the Gay Rights Movement.

1987 – For the first time in military history, a civilian population is targeted for chemical attack when Iraqi warplanes bombed the Iranian town of Sardasht.

1997 – Holyfield–Tyson II: Mike Tyson is disqualified in the third round for biting a piece off Evander Holyfield's ear.

Births

1577 – Peter Paul Rubens; 1703 – John Wesley; 1852 – Charles Cruft (founded Crufts Dog Show); 1891 – Carl Panzram (bad man); 1902 – Richard Rodgers (Rodgers and Hammerstein); 1909 – Eric Ambler; 1915 – David "Honeyboy" Edwards; 1920 – A. E. Hotchner; 1926 – Mel Brooks; 1928 – Hans Blix; 1931 – Junior Johnson; 1932 – Pat Morita; 1938 – John Byner, Leon Panetta; 1943 - Bobby Harrison (Procol Harum); 1945 - David Knights (Procol Harum); 1946 – Bruce Davison, Gilda Radner; 1948 – Kathy Bates; 1960 – John Elway; 1966 – John Cusack, Mary Stuart Masterson; 1967 – Gil Bellows; 1971 – Elon Musk; 1986 – Kellie Pickler

Deaths

1836 – James Madison; 1914 – Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria; 1975 – Rod Serling; 1993 – GG Allin; 2006 – George Page; 2014 – Meshach Taylor; 2015 – Jack Carter

June29

1534 – Jacques Cartier is the first European to reach Prince Edward Island.

1613 – The Globe Theatre in London burns to the ground.

1776 – Father Francisco Palou founds Mission San Francisco de Asís in what is now San Francisco, CA.

1786 – Alexander Macdonell and over five hundred Roman Catholic highlanders leave Scotland to settle in Glengarry County, Ontario, Canada.

1880 – France annexes Tahiti.

1888 – George Edward Gouraud records Handel's Israel in Egypt onto a phonograph cylinder, thought for many years to be the oldest known recording of music.

1927 – The Bird of Paradise, a U.S. Army Air Corps Fokker tri-motor, completes the first transpacific flight, from the mainland United States to Hawaii.

First test of Wallace Turnbull's controllable-pitch propeller.

1956 – The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 is signed, officially creating the United States Interstate Highway System.

1974 – Mikhail Baryshnikov defects from the Soviet Union to Canada while on tour with the Kirov Ballet.

1975 – Steve Wozniak tested his first prototype of the Apple I computer.

1985 - John Lennon's 1965 Rolls-Royce Phantom V limousine, with psychedelic paintwork, sold for a record sum of $3,006,385, (£1,768,462) at a Sotheby's auction in New York.

1988 - Brenda Richie, the wife of Lionel Richie was arrested in Beverly Hills, California after allegedly hitting the singer and a young woman after she found them in bed together.

1999 - Michael Jackson suffered severe bruising after falling over 50 feet when a bridge collapsed during a concert at Munich's Olympic stadium.

2007 – Apple Inc. releases its first mobile phone, the iPhone.

2012 – A derecho sweeps across the eastern United States, leaving at least 22 people dead and millions without power.

Births

1861 – William James Mayo (co-founder Mayo Clinic); 1901 – Nelson Eddy; 1910 – Frank Loesser; 1919 – Slim Pickens; 1920 – Ray Harryhausen; 1930 – Robert Evans; 1936 – Harmon Killebrew; 1943 – Little Eva; 1944 – Gary Busey; 1948 – Fred Grandy, Ian Paice (Deep Purple); 1949 – Dan Dierdorf; 1953 – Don Dokken:devil:, Colin Hay; 1957 – María Conchita Alonso; 1957 – Michael Nutter; 1961 – Sharon Lawrence; 1967 – Jeff Burton (NASCAR driver); 1978 – Nicole Scherzinger; 1980 – Martin Truex Jr. (NASCAR driver)

Deaths

1852 – Henry Clay; 1861 – Elizabeth Barrett Browning; 1933 – Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle; 1940 – Paul Klee; 1941 – Ignacy Jan Paderewski; 1967 – Jayne Mansfield; 1975 – Tim Buckley; 1978 – Bob Crane; 1979 – Lowell George; 1995 – Lana Turner; 1997 – William Hickey; 2002 – Rosemary Clooney; 2003 – Katharine Hepburn; 2007 – Fred Saberhagen, Joel Siegel; 2008 – Don S. Davis (Stargate SG-1); 2013 – Victor Lundin (Star Trek's first Klingon)

June 30

1520 – Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés fight their way out of Tenochtitlan.

1559 – King Henry II of France is mortally wounded in a jousting match against Gabriel, comte de Montgomery.

1859 – French acrobat Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope.

1864 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln grants Yosemite Valley to California for "public use, resort and recreation".

1882 – Charles J. Guiteau is hanged in Washington, D.C. for the assassination of U.S. President James Garfield.

1905 – Albert Einstein sends the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, in which he introduces special relativity, for publication in Annalen der Physik.

1906 – The United States Congress passes the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act.

1908 – A massive explosion occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, knocking down over 80 million trees covering 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi).

1912 – The Regina Cyclone hits Regina, Saskatchewan, killing 28. It remains Canada's deadliest tornado event.

1921 – U.S. President Warren G. Harding appoints former President William Howard Taft Chief Justice of the United States.

1934 – The Night of the Long Knives, Adolf Hitler's violent purge of his political rivals in Germany, takes place.

1937 – The world's first emergency telephone number, 999, is introduced in London.

1953 – The first Chevrolet Corvette rolls off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan.

1956 – A TWA Super Constellation and a United Airlines DC-7 collide above the Grand Canyon in Arizona and crash, killing all 128 on board both airliners.

1959 – A United States Air Force F-100 Super Sabre from Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, crashes into a nearby elementary school, killing 11 students plus six residents from the local neighborhood.

1971 – The crew of the Soviet Soyuz 11 spacecraft are killed when their air supply escapes through a faulty valve.

1976 - Police raid the home of Neil Diamond searching for drugs, they find less than one ounce of marijuana.

Stuart Goddard, (Adam Ant), placed the following ad in the classified section of Melody Maker, 'Beat on a bass, with the B-Sides.' Andy Warren answered the ad and the pair went on to form Adam and The Ants.

1977 - Marvel Comics launched a comic book based on the rock group KISS.

1985 – Thirty-nine American hostages from the hijacked TWA Flight 847 are freed in Beirut after being held for 17 days.

1989 - Police were called in to control over 4,000 Bobby Brown fans trying to see him at the HMV Record store in London's Oxford Street, six fans were hospitalized and one had to be resuscitated.

1990 - Police raid Chuck Berry's estate and seize homemade porn videos, drugs and guns.

1995 - American soul singer Phyllis Hyman committed suicide by overdosing on pentobarbital and secobarbital in her New York City apartment aged 45. She was found hours before she was scheduled to perform at the Apollo Theatre, in New York.

2000 - Eight men were trampled to death during Pearl Jam's performance at the Roskilde Festival, near Copenhagen. Police said the victims had all slipped or fallen in the mud in front of the stage.

2013 – Nineteen firefighters die controlling a wildfire in Yarnell, Arizona.

2015 – A Hercules C-130 military aircraft with 113 people on board crashes in a residential area in the Indonesian city of Medan, resulting in at least 116 deaths.

2016 – Rodrigo Duterte was sworn into office as the 16th President of the Philippines.

Births

1889 – Archibald Frazer-Nash (founder of Frazer Nash automobiles); 1891 – Man Mountain Dean; 1906 – Anthony Mann (director); 1917 – Susan Hayward, Lena Horne; 1934 – Harry Blackstone Jr.; 1942 – Robert Ballard; 1956 – David Alan Grier; 1957 – Sterling Marlin (ret'd NASCAR driver); 1959 – Vincent D'Onofrio; 1963 – Rupert Graves, Yngwie Malmsteen; 1966 – Mike Tyson:boxers:; 1968 – Phil Anselmo (Pantera); 1971 – Monica Potter; 1983 - Cheryl Cole; 1984 – Fantasia Barrino; 1985 – Michael Phelps, T-Pain

Deaths

1882 – Charles J. Guiteau (assassin); 1961 – Lee de Forest (invented the audion tube); 2001 – Chet Atkins; 2003 – Buddy Hackett; 2014 – Paul Mazursky

July 1

The end of today (actually 1 a.m. July 2) marks the halfway point of 2016.

There are 183 days remaining in 2016.

1766 – François-Jean de la Barre, a young French nobleman, is tortured and beheaded before his body is burnt on a pyre along with a copy of Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique nailed to his torso for the crime of not saluting a Roman Catholic religious procession in Abbeville, France.:facepalm:

1770 – Lexell's Comet passes closer to the Earth than any other comet in recorded history, approaching to a distance of 0.0146 a.u. (astronomical unit).

1819 – Johann Georg Tralles discovers the Great Comet of 1819, (C/1819 N1). It was the first comet analyzed using polarimetry, by François Arago.

1863 – American Civil War: The Battle of Gettysburg begins.

1867 – The British North America Act of 1867 takes effect as the Constitution of Canada, creating the Canadian Confederation and the federal dominion of Canada; Sir John A. Macdonald is sworn in as the first Prime Minister of Canada. This date is commemorated annually in Canada as Canada Day, a national holiday.:f32:

1874 – The Sholes and Glidden typewriter, the first commercially successful typewriter, goes on sale.

1879 – Charles Taze Russell publishes the first edition of the religious magazine The Watchtower.

1881 – The world's first international telephone call is made between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, and Calais, Maine, United States. A distance of app. 2.6 miles.

1898 – Spanish–American War: The Battle of San Juan Hill is fought in Santiago de Cuba.

1903 – Start of first Tour de France bicycle race.

1908 – SOS is adopted as the international distress signal.

1915 – Leutnant Kurt Wintgens of the then-named German Fliegertruppe air service achieves the first known aerial victory with a synchronized machine-gun-armed fighter plane, the Fokker M.5K/MG Eindecker.

1916 – World War I: First day on the Somme: On the first day of the Battle of the Somme 19,000 soldiers of the British Army are killed and 40,000 wounded.

The first attack of the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 occurs.

1931 – United Airlines begins service (as Boeing Air Transport).

1932 – Australia's national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, was formed.

1933 – Wiley Post becomes the first person to fly solo around the world traveling 15,596 miles (25,099 km) in seven days, 18 hours and 45 minutes.

1942 – World War II: First Battle of El Alamein.

1943 – Tokyo City merges with Tokyo Prefecture and is dissolved. Since this date, no city in Japan has the name "Tokyo" (present-day Tokyo is not officially a city).

1956 - Elvis Presley appeared on NBC- TV's 'The Steve Allen Show' and performed 'Hound Dog', to a live Hound Dog. US TV critic John Crosby panned Elvis' performance, calling him an 'unspeakable, untalented and vulgar young entertainer.'

1959 – Specific values for the international yard, avoirdupois pound and derived units (e.g. inch, mile and ounce) are adopted after an agreement between the U.S.A., the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries.

1963 – ZIP codes are introduced for United States mail.

1968 – The United States Central Intelligence Agency's Phoenix Program is officially established.

The Band released their debut album Music From Big Pink. The album, which features their first hit single The Weight, was recorded in studios in New York and Los Angeles.

1972 – The first Gay pride march in England takes place.

1979 – Sony introduces the Walkman (no, not Walking Man, he's strictly ours;)).

1980 – "O Canada" officially becomes the national anthem of Canada.

1981 – The Wonderland murders occur in the early morning hours in Los Angeles, allegedly masterminded by businessman and drug dealer Eddie Nash.

Rushton Moreve bassist with Steppenwolf, was killed in motorcycle accident in Santa Barbara, California, aged 32. He co-wrote their hit 'Magic Carpet Ride' with lead singer John Kay.

1983 - A New Jersey-based quintet calling themselves Bon Jovi signed to Phonogram's Mercury records, although they had also been considering the name Johnny Electric. The group have since sold over 130 million records worldwide, and performed more than 2,600 concerts in over 50 countries for more than 34 million fans.

1984 – The PG-13 rating is introduced by the MPAA.

1987 – The American radio station WFAN in New York City is launched as the world's first all-sports radio station.

1991 – The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague.

1995 - DJ Wolfman Jack dies of a heart attack.

2004 - Glen Campbell began serving 10 nights in jail along with two years of probation for a November 2003 drunk-driving, hit-and-run collision. The 68 year old entertainer was also sentenced to 75 hours of community service and fined $900.

2005 - American R&B and soul singer-songwriter, record producer Luther Vandross died at the age of 54 at the JFK Medical Centre in New Jersey, two years after suffering a major stroke.

2007 – The Concert for Diana is held at the new Wembley Stadium in London and broadcast in 140 countries.

Smoking in England is banned in all public indoor spaces.


2008 - Whitesnake guitarist Mel Galley, died at the age of 60 from cancer of the oesophagus.

2013 – Neptune's moon S/2004 N 1 is discovered.

Continued in next post

July 1 (continued)

Births

1804 – George Sand; 1807 – Thomas Green Clemson (Clemson University); 1899 – Charles Laughton; 1902 – William Wyler; 1906 – Estée Lauder; 1915 – Willie Dixon; 1925 – Farley Granger; 1928 - Bobby Day ("Rockin' Robin"); 1931 – Leslie Caron; 1934 – Jamie Farr, Sydney Pollack; 1935 – James Cotton; 1939 – Karen Black, Delaney Bramlett (Delaney & Bonnie); 1941 – Twyla Tharp; 1942 – Geneviève Bujold, Andraé Crouch; 1945 – Debbie Harry; 1949 – John Farnham; 1950 – David Duke (racist); 1951 – Fred Schneider (The B-52s), Victor Willis (lead singer Village People); 1952 – Dan Aykroyd; 1954 – Keith Whitley (singer/song writer); 1960 - Evelyn Champagne King; 1961 – Carl Lewis, Diana, Princess of Wales; 1962 – Andre Braugher; 1967 – Pamela Anderson; 1971 – Missy Elliott; 1972 – Claire Forlani; 1977 – Liv Tyler ('Arwen' in "TLOTR: TFOTR")

Deaths

1860 – Charles Goodyear; 1884 – Allan Pinkerton; 1896 – Harriet Beecher Stowe; 1925 – Erik Satie; 1950 – Eliel Saarinen (architect); 1965 – Robert Ruark; 1974 – Juan Perón; 1983 – Buckminster Fuller; 1991 – Michael Landon; 1995 – Wolfman Jack; 1996 – Margaux Hemingway; 1997 – Robert Mitchum; 1999 – Forrest Mars Sr.; 2000 – Walter Matthau; 2004 – Marlon Brando; 2005 – Luther Vandross; 2009 – Karl Malden; 2010 – Arnold Friberg

July 2

1698 – Thomas Savery patents the first steam engine.

1776 – The Continental Congress adopts the Lee Resolution severing ties with the Kingdom of Great Britain although the wording of the formal Declaration of Independence is not approved until July 4.

1839 – Twenty miles off the coast of Cuba, 53 rebelling African slaves led by Joseph Cinqué take over the slave ship La Amistad.

1853 – The Russian Army crossed the Pruth river into the Danubian Principalities, Moldavia and Wallachia, providing the spark that set off the Crimean War.

1881 – Charles J. Guiteau shoots and fatally wounds U.S. President James Garfield, who eventually dies from an infection on September 19.

1897 – British-Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi obtains a patent for radio in London.

1937 – Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan are last heard from over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first equatorial round-the-world flight.

1956 - Elvis Presley recorded 'Hound Dog' at RCA Studios, New York. Take 31 being the version they released. This was the first time The Jordanaires worked with Presley. The single sold over 10 million copies globally, became his best-selling song and topped the pop chart for 11 weeks, a record that stood for 36 years.

1962 – The first Wal-Mart store opens for business in Rogers, Arkansas.

Jimi Hendrix was honourably discharged from the 101st Airborne Paratroopers (Screaming Eagles):devil:, after breaking his ankle during his 26th and final parachute jump.

1964 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 meant to prohibit segregation in public places.

1969, Bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell quit The Jimi Hendrix Experience after completing the three-day Denver Pop Festival.

1971 - Queen appeared at Surrey College, England. This was the group's first gig with the line-up of Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon.

2001 – The AbioCor self-contained artificial heart is first implanted.

2002 – Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly solo around the world nonstop in a balloon.

Births

1492 – Elizabeth Tudor; 1877 – Hermann Hesse; 1904 – René Lacoste; 1908 – Thurgood Marshall; 1916 – Ken Curtis; 1922 – Pierre Cardin; 1925 – Medgar Evers; 1927 – Brock Peters; 1929 – Imelda Marcos; 1932 – Dave Thomas (Wendy's); 1937 – Polly Holliday, Richard Petty; 1939 – John H. Sununu, Paul Williams; 1942 – Vicente Fox; 1946 – Ron Silver; 1947 – Larry David; 1948 – Gene McFadden (McFadden & Whitehead); 1956 – Jerry Hall; 1957 – Bret Hart; 1964 – Doug Benson, Jose Canseco, Ozzie Canseco; 1979 – Sam Hornish Jr.; 1985 - Ashley Tisdale; 1986 – Lindsay Lohan; 1990 – Margot Robbie

Deaths

1566 – Nostradamus; 1961 – Ernest Hemingway; 1964 – Fireball Roberts; 1973 – Betty Grable; 1977 – Vladimir Nabokov; 1991 – Lee Remick:heartpump; 1993 – Fred Gwynne; 1999 – Mario Puzo; 2007 – Beverly Sills

July 3

1035 – William the Conqueror becomes the Duke of Normandy, reigns until 1087.

1608 – Québec City is founded by Samuel de Champlain.

1754 – French and Indian War: George Washington surrenders Fort Necessity to French forces.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: George Washington takes command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1844 – The last pair of great auks is killed.

1852 – Congress establishes the United States' 2nd mint in San Francisco.

1863 – American Civil War: The final day of the Battle of Gettysburg culminates with Pickett's Charge.

1884 – Dow Jones & Company publishes its first stock average.

1886 – Karl Benz officially unveils the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, the first purpose-built automobile.

1890 – Idaho is admitted as the 43rd U.S. state.

1913 – Confederate veterans at the Great Reunion of 1913 reenact Pickett's Charge; upon reaching the high-water mark of the Confederacy they are met by the outstretched hands of friendship from Union survivors.

1938 – World speed record for a steam locomotive is set in England, by the Mallard, which reaches a speed of 125.88 miles per hour (202.58 km/h).

United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates the Eternal Light Peace Memorial and lights the eternal flame at Gettysburg Battlefield.

1968 - At an impromptu gathering at Joni Mitchell's house in Lookout Mountain, Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash played together for the very first time.

1969 – Space Race: The biggest explosion in the history of rocketry occurs when the Soviet N-1 rocket explodes and subsequently destroys its launchpad.

1969 - Brian Jones drowned while under the influence of drugs and alcohol after taking a midnight swim in his pool, aged 27. His body was found at the bottom of the pool by his Swedish girlfriend Anna Wohlin. The coroner's report stated "Death by misadventure", and noted his liver and heart were heavily enlarged by drug and alcohol abuse.

1971 - American singer, songwriter and poet, Jim Morrison of The Doors was found dead in a bathtub in Paris, France, the cause of death was given as a heart attack.

1972 - Blues singer, guitarist Mississippi Fred McDowell died of cancer aged 68. He coached Bonnie Raitt on slide guitar technique.

1975 - Lead singer from Three Dog Night Chuck Negron was arrested at his Louisville hotel room on the opening night of the bands tour and charged with possession of cocaine.

1988 – United States Navy warship USS Vincennes shoots down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people aboard.

1996 – The Stone of Scone is returned to Scotland.

Births

1866 – Albert Gottschalk; 1883 – Franz Kafka; 1893 – Mississippi John Hurt; 1909 – Stavros Niarchos; 1930 – Pete Fountain; 1930 – Tommy Tedesco (The Wrecking Crew); 1935 – Harrison Schmitt; 1940 – Lamar Alexander; 1941 – Gloria Allred; 1943 – Kurtwood Smith; 1946 – Johnny Lee; 1947 – Dave Barry; 1948 – Paul Barrere (Little Feat); 1956 – Montel Williams; 1957 – Laura Branigan; 1959 – Stephen Pearcy (Ratt); 1962 – Tom Cruise, Thomas Gibson ('Agent Hotchner' on "Criminal Minds"), Hunter Tylo; 1964 – Yeardley Smith (voice of 'Lisa Simpson' on "The Simpsons); 1965 – Connie Nielsen; 1971 – Julian Assange; 1973 – Patrick Wilson; 1976 – Wanderlei Silva (MMA fighter); 1980 – Olivia Munn

Deaths

1863 – George Hull Ward, Little Crow; 1935 – André Citroën (founded the Citroën Company); 1937 – Jacob Schick (invented the electric razor); 1965 – Trigger (Roy Rogers' horse); 1969 – Brian Jones; 1971 – Jim Morrison; 1981 – Ross Martin ("Wild, Wild West"); 1986 – Rudy Vallée; 1989 – Jim Backus; 2001 – Johnny Russell; 2007 – Boots Randolph; 2012 – Andy Griffith, Hollie Stevens (porn actress)

July 4

Today is Independence Day in the United States of America.

At 4:24 p.m. today, the Earth will be at it's farthest point from the Sun, known as aphelion of the Earth.

There are 180 days remaining in 2016.

1054 – A supernova, SN 1054, is seen by Chinese Song dynasty, Arab, and possibly Amerindian observers near the star Zeta Tauri. For several months it remains bright enough to be seen during the day. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula.

1744 – The Treaty of Lancaster, in which the Iroquois cedes lands between the Allegheny Mountains and the Ohio River to the British colonies, was signed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

1776 – American Revolution: The United States Declaration of Independence is adopted by the Second Continental Congress.

1802 – The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York opens.

1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is announced to the American people.

1817 – In Rome, New York, construction on the Erie Canal begins.

1826 – Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, dies the same day as John Adams, second president of the United States, on the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the United States Declaration of Independence.

1831 – Samuel Francis Smith writes "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" for the Boston, Massachusetts July 4 festivities.

1837 – Grand Junction Railway, the world's first long-distance railway, opens between Birmingham and Liverpool.

1855 – In Brooklyn, New York City, the first edition of Walt Whitman's book of poems, Leaves of Grass, is published.

1862 – Lewis Carroll tells Alice Liddell a story that would grow into Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequels.

1863 – American Civil War: Siege of Vicksburg: Vicksburg, Mississippi surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant after 47 days of siege. One hundred fifty miles up the Mississippi River, a Confederate Army is repulsed at the Battle of Helena, in Arkansas.

American Civil War: The Army of Northern Virginia withdraws from the battlefield after losing the Battle of Gettysburg, signalling an end to the Southern invasion of the North.

1881 – In Alabama, the Tuskegee Institute opens.

1886 – The people of France offer the Statue of Liberty to the people of the United States.

1892 – Western Samoa changes the International Date Line. Monday, July 4 occurs twice, resulting in a year with 367 days.

1910 – African-American boxer Jack Johnson knocks out white boxer Jim Jeffries in a heavyweight boxing match, sparking race riots across the United States.

1911 – A massive heat wave strikes the northeastern United States, killing 380 people in eleven days and breaking temperature records in several cities.

1918 – Bolsheviks kill Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family (Julian calendar date).

1927 – First flight of the Lockheed Vega.

1939 – Lou Gehrig, recently diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, informs a crowd at Yankee Stadium that he considers himself "The luckiest man on the face of the earth", then announces his retirement from major league baseball.

1943 – World War II: The Battle of Kursk, the largest full-scale battle in history and the world's largest tank battle, begins in Prokhorovka village.

1950 – Radio Free Europe first broadcasts.

1974 - Despite the fact that they have the No.4 song in the US with 'Rikki Don't Lose That Number' and a current Platinum album with 'Pretzel Logic', Steely Dan's Walter Becker and Donald Fagan play their final gig together in Santa Monica, California. They will not tour again for the next eighteen years.

1976 - The Clash made their live debut supporting the Sex Pistols at the Black Swan, Sheffield, England.

1984 -- Richard Petty wins his 200th and final NASCAR Winston cup race.

2000 - A man fell 80 feet to his death during a Metallica concert at Raven Stadium, Baltimore.

2002 - Tony Bennett had to abandon a show at London's Royal Albert Hall after a fire broke out in the building. The audience were evacuated after smoke began to fill the hall.

2004 – The cornerstone of the Freedom Tower is laid on the World Trade Center site in New York City.

2007 - Former laboratory worker Devon Townsend admitted to a court in Albuquerque, New Mexico of stalking Chester Bennington lead singer with Linkin Park. Townsend used US government computers to obtain his personal information, accessing Bennington's e-mail account and mobile phone voicemail. The court was told how she travelled to Arizona solely for the purpose of trying to see the singer and monitored his voicemails as a means of trying to locate where he might be eating.

2009 – The Statue of Liberty's crown reopens to the public after eight years of closure due to security concerns following the September 11 attacks.

Births

1804 – Nathaniel Hawthorne; 1816 – Hiram Walker (founded Canadian club whiskey); 1826 – Stephen Foster; 1847 – James Anthony Bailey (co-founded Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus); 1854 – Bill Tilghman (city marshal Dodge City, Kansas); 1872 – Calvin Coolidge; 1882 – Louis B. Mayer; 1883 – Rube Goldberg; 1902 – Meyer Lansky; 1911 – Mitch Miller; 1918 – Pauline Phillips (created Dear Abby); 1920 – Leona Helmsley (The Queen of Mean); 1924 – Eva Marie Saint; 1927 – Gina Lollobrigida, Neil Simon; 1929 – Al Davis; 1930 – George Steinbrenner; 1931 – Stephen Boyd; 1938 – Bill Withers; 1943 – Geraldo Rivera, Alan Wilson; 1946 – Ron Kovic (subject "Born On The Fourth Of July"), Michael Milken; 1952 – John Waite; 1962 – Pam Shriver; 1963 – Michael Sweet; 1964 – Mark Slaughter; 1971 – Koko (gorilla)

Deaths

1826 – John Adams (POTUS), Thomas Jefferson (POTUS); 1831 – James Monroe (POTUS); 1891 – Hannibal Hamlin (VPOTUS); 1934 – Marie Curie; 1991 – Art Sansom (created The Born Loser comic strip); 1995 – Eva Gabor, Bob Ross; 1997 – Charles Kuralt; 2003 – Barry White; 2008 – Jesse Helms (and there was much rejoicing)

July 5

1687 – Isaac Newton publishes Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

1775 – The Second Continental Congress adopts the Olive Branch Petition.

1915 – The Liberty Bell leaves Philadelphia by special train on its way to the Panama–Pacific International Exposition. This is the last trip outside Philadelphia that the custodians of the bell intend to permit.

1935 – The National Labor Relations Act, which governs labor relations in the United States, is signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1937 – Spam, the luncheon meat, is introduced into the market by the Hormel Foods Corporation.

1943 – World War II: An Allied invasion fleet sails for Sicily (Operation Husky).

German forces begin a massive offensive against the Soviet Union at the Battle of Kursk, also known as Operation Citadel.

1945 – World War II: The liberation of the Philippines is declared.

1946 – The bikini goes on sale after debuting during an outdoor fashion show at the Molitor Pool in Paris, France. (And there was much rejoicing.)

1948 – National Health Service Acts create the national public health system in the United Kingdom.

1950 – Zionism: The Knesset passes the Law of Return which grants all Jews the right to immigrate to Israel.

1954 – The BBC broadcasts its first television news bulletin.

1954 – Elvis Presley records his first single, "That's All Right," at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee.

1965 - Marty Balin and Paul Kantner formed a Folk-Rock group that would evolve into the Jefferson Airplane, the premier San Francisco psychedelic band of the late '60s. The Airplane made its debut the following month at a Haight-Ashbury club, and was signed to RCA later in the year.

1971 – Right to vote: The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years, is formally certified by President Richard Nixon.

1973 – A boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion (BLEVE) in Kingman, Arizona, following a fire that broke out as propane was being transferred from a railroad car to a storage tank, kills eleven firefighters.

1975 – Arthur Ashe becomes the first black man to win the Wimbledon singles title.

1978 - The manufacturing of Some Girls the new album by The Rolling Stones was halted at EMI's pressing plant after complaints from celebrities, including Lucille Ball, who were featured in mock advertisements on the album sleeve.

1980 – Swedish tennis player Björn Borg wins his fifth Wimbledon final and becomes the first male tennis player to win the championships five times in a row (1976–1980).

1989 – Iran–Contra affair: Oliver North is sentenced by U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell to a three-year suspended prison term, two years probation, $150,000 in fines and 1,200 hours community service. His convictions are later overturned.

1995 - More than 100 Grateful Dead fans were hurt when a wooden deck collapsed at a campground lodge in Wentzville, Missouri. Hundreds of people were on or under the deck sheltering from heavy rain. More than 4,000 Deadheads were staying at the campground while attending Grateful Dead concerts in the St. Louis suburb.

1996 – Dolly the sheep becomes the first mammal cloned from an adult cell.

2000 - Cub Koda (Michael "Cub" Koda), founder member of Brownsville Station died of complications from kidney failure. Wrote the 2 million selling 1974 hit 'Smokin' In The Boys Room', (which Motley Crue covered). He took his nickname from Cubby on television's Mickey Mouse Club.

2009 – The largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever discovered, consisting of more than 1,500 items, is found near the village of Hammerwich, in Staffordshire, England.

2012 – The Shard in London is inaugurated as the tallest building in Europe, with a height of 310 metres (1,020 ft).

2016 – NASA's Juno spacecraft enters orbit of Jupiter.

Births

1586 – Thomas Hooker; 1801 – David Farragut; 1810 – P. T. Barnum; 1902 – Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.; 1904 – Milburn Stone ('Doc Adams' on "Gunsmoke"); 1911 – Georges Pompidou; 1928 – Warren Oates; 1929 – Katherine Helmond; 1943 – Robbie Robertson:shred:; 1948 – William Hootkins, Cassie Gaines (back-up singer Lynyrd Skynyrd); 1950 – Huey Lewis, Michael Monarch; 1951 – Goose Gossage; 1954 – Jimmy Crespo (Aerosmith); 1958 – Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes); 1959 – Marc Cohn; 1960 – Pruitt Taylor Vince (turned nystagmus into a career); 1963 – Edie Falco

Deaths

1819 – William Cornwallis; 1920 – Max Klinger; 2001 – Ernie K-Doe; 2002 – Ted Williams; 2006 – Kenneth Lay

July 6

Today is Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan.

The Festival of San Fermín (including The Running Of The Bulls) begins today in Pamplona, Spain.

1189 – Richard I "The Lionheart" accedes to the English throne.

1483 – Richard III is crowned King of England.

1484 – Portuguese sea captain Diogo Cão finds the mouth of the Congo River.

1777 – American Revolutionary War: Siege of Fort Ticonderoga: After a bombardment by British artillery under General John Burgoyne, American forces retreat from Fort Ticonderoga, New York.

1854 – In Jackson, Michigan, the first convention of the United States Republican Party is held.

1865 – The first issue of The Nation magazine is published.

1885 – Louis Pasteur successfully tests his vaccine against rabies on Joseph Meister, a boy who was bitten by a rabid dog.

1892 – Three thousand eight hundred striking steelworkers engage in a day-long battle with Pinkerton agents during the Homestead Strike, leaving ten dead and dozens wounded.

1917 – World War I: Arabian troops led by T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") and Auda ibu Tayi capture Aqaba from the Ottoman Empire during the Arab Revolt.

1940 – Story Bridge, a major landmark in Brisbane, as well as Australia's longest cantilever bridge is formally opened.

1942 – Anne Frank and her family go into hiding in the "Secret Annexe" above her father's office in an Amsterdam warehouse.

1944 – Jackie Robinson refuses to move to the back of a bus, leading to a court-martial.

1947 – The AK-47 goes into production in the Soviet Union.

1957 – Althea Gibson wins the Wimbledon championships, becoming the first black athlete to do so.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney meet for the first time, as teenagers at Woolton Fete, three years before forming the Beatles.

1988 – The Piper Alpha drilling platform in the North Sea is destroyed by explosions and fires. One hundred sixty-seven oil workers are killed, making it the world's worst offshore oil disaster in terms of direct loss of life.

1990 – Electronic Frontier Foundation is founded.

1995 – In the Bosnian War, under the command of General Ratko Mladić, Serbia begins its attack on the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, and kills more than 8000 Bosniaks, in what then- UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali called "the worst crime on European soil since the Second World War".

1999 – U.S. Army private Barry Winchell dies from baseball-bat injuries inflicted on him in his sleep the previous day by a fellow soldier, Calvin Glover, for his relationship with transgender showgirl and former Navy Corpsman Calpernia Addams.

2003 – The 70-metre Yevpatoria Planetary Radar sends a METI message (Cosmic Call 2) to five stars: Hip 4872, HD 245409, 55 Cancri (HD 75732), HD 10307 and 47 Ursae Majoris (HD 95128). The messages will arrive to these stars in 2036, 2040, 2044, and 2049, respectively.

2013 – A Boeing 777 operating as Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashes at San Francisco International Airport, killing three and injuring 181 of the 307 people on board.

A 73-car oil train derails in the town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec and explodes into flames, killing at least 47 people and destroying more than 30 buildings in the town's central area.

Births

1747 – John Paul Jones (no, not Led Zep's bass player, there was another one); 1887 – Marc Chagall; 1907 – Frida Kahlo, George Stanley (designed the flag of Canada); 1914 – Vince McMahon, Sr.; 1918 – Sebastian Cabot ('Mr. French' in "Family Affair"); 1921 – Nancy Reagan; 1922 – William Schallert; 1925 – Merv Griffin, Bill Haley; 1927 – Janet Leigh, Pat Paulsen; 1931 – Della Reese; 1936 – Dave Allen:devil:; 1937 – Ned Beatty, Gene Chandler (The Duke Of Earl); 1940 – Jeannie Seely; 1945 – Burt Ward ('Robin The Boy Wonder'); 1946 – George W. Bush, Fred Dryer, Sylvester Stallone; 1951 – Geoffrey Rush; 1954 – Allyce Beasley (receptionist on "Moonlighting"); 1966 – Brian Posehn; 1975 – Curtis Jackson (50 Cent); 1978 – Tamera & Tia Mowry; 1979 – Kevin Hart; 1980 – Eva Green; 1982 – Misty Upham

Deaths

893 – Guy de Maupassant; 1962 – William Faulkner; 1971 – Louis 'Satchmo' Armstrong; 1973 – Otto Klemperer; 1998 – Roy Rogers (real name Leonard Slye); 1999 – Barry Winchell; 2002 – John Frankenheimer; 2003 – Buddy Ebsen; 2005 – Ed McBain; 2007 – Kathleen E. Woodiwiss; 2009 – Robert McNamara; 2015 – Jerry Weintraub

July 7

Today the Japanese celebrate Tanabata, The Star Festival.

1456 – A retrial verdict acquits Joan of Arc of heresy 25 years after her death.

1534 – Jacques Cartier makes his first contact with aboriginal peoples in what is now Canada.

1798 – As a result of the XYZ Affair, the U.S. Congress rescinds the Treaty of Alliance with France sparking the "Quasi-War".

1846 – American troops occupy Monterey and Yerba Buena, thus beginning the conquest of California.

1863 – The United States begins its first military draft; exemptions cost $300.

1865 – Four conspirators in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln are hanged.

1898 – U.S. President William McKinley signs the Newlands Resolution annexing Hawaii as a territory of the United States.

1907 – Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. staged his first Follies on the roof of the New York Theater in New York City.

1928 – Sliced bread is sold for the first time (on the inventor's 48th birthday) by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri. (Grandmadigr is, literally, older than sliced bread:))

1930 – Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser begins construction of Boulder Dam (now known as Hoover Dam).

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, dies.

1944 – World War II: Largest Banzai charge of the Pacific War at the Battle of Saipan.

1947 – The Roswell incident, the (supposed) crash of an alien spaceship near Roswell in New Mexico.

1952 – The ocean liner SS United States passes Bishop Rock on her maiden voyage, breaking the transatlantic speed record to become the fastest passenger ship in the world.

1958 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Alaska Statehood Act into law.

1980 - Led Zeppelin played their last-ever concert when they appeared at Eissporthalle, West Berlin at the end of a European tour. They finished the show with a 17-minute version of 'Whole Lotta Love'.

1981 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan appoints Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female member of the Supreme Court of the United States.

1983 – Cold War: Ten year old Samantha Smith, a U.S. schoolgirl, flies to the Soviet Union at the invitation of Secretary General Yuri Andropov.

1989 - It was announced, that for the first time, compact discs were out selling vinyl albums.

2005 – A series of four explosions occurs on London's transport system killing 56 people, including four suicide bombers, and injuring over 700 others.

2006 - Syd Barrett, founding member of Pink Floyd, died from complications arising from diabetes, aged 60.

2015, Climate scientists from five leading universities found that 163 of Bob Dylan's 542 songs reference the climate – almost a third – making him the musician most likely to mention the weather in his lyrics. The Beatles came in at number two, mentioning the weather in 48 of the 308 songs they wrote.

Births

1860 – Gustav Mahler; 1891 – Virginia Rappe; 1899 – George Cukor; 1906 – Satchel Paige; 1907 – Robert A. Heinlein; 1913 – Pinetop Perkins; 1919 – Jon Pertwee (3rd Dr. Who); 1924 – Mary Ford; 1927 – Charlie Louvin, Doc Severinsen; 1931 – David Eddings; 1940 – Ringo Starr:drummer:; 1943 – Joel Siegel; 1947 - David Hodo (the construction worker in The Village People); 1949 – Shelley Duvall; 1959 – Billy Campbell; 1966 – Jim Gaffigan; 1968 – Jorja Fox; 1972 – Kirsten Vangsness; 1989 – Landon Cassill (NASCAR driver)

Deaths

1647 – Thomas Hooker; 1890 – Henri Nestlé; 1930 – Arthur Conan Doyle; 1971 – Ub Iwerks (co-created Mickey Mouse); 1973 – Veronica Lake; 1975 – Ruffian (race horse); 1990 – Bill Cullen; 1993 – Mia Zapata (The Gits); 1994 – Cameron Mitchell; 2006 – Syd Barrett; 2014 – Dick Jones (voice of Pinocchio), Eduard Shevardnadze

July 8

1497 – Vasco da Gama sets sail on the first direct European voyage to India.

1760 – British forces defeat French forces in the last naval battle in New France.

1776 – Church bells (possibly including the Liberty Bell) are rung after John Nixon delivers the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence of the United States.

1822 – Chippewas turn over a huge tract of land in Ontario to the United Kingdom.

1898 – The death of crime boss Soapy Smith, killed in the Shootout on Juneau Wharf, releases Skagway, Alaska from his iron grip.

1932 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22.

1947 – Reports are broadcast that a UFO crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico in what became known as the Roswell UFO incident.

1954 - Producer Sam Phillips took an acetate recording of Elvis Presley singing 'That's All Right' to Memphis radio station WHBQ DJ Dewey Phillips. He played the song just after 9.30 that evening, the phone lines lit up asking the DJ to play the song again.

1958 - The first Gold record album presented by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was awarded to the soundtrack LP, 'Oklahoma!'.

1960 – Francis Gary Powers is charged with espionage resulting from his flight over the Soviet Union.

1967 - The Monkees began a 29-date tour with The Jimi Hendrix Experience as support act. Hendrix was dropped after six shows after being told his act was not suitable for their teenybopper audience.

1968 – The Chrysler wildcat strike begins in Detroit, Michigan.

1969, Marianne Faithfull collapsed on the set of 'Ned Kelly' after taking a drug overdose. She was admitted to a Sydney Hospital, (she was later dropped from the movie).

1970 – Richard Nixon delivers a special congressional message enunciating Native American self-determination as official US Indian policy, leading to the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975.

1982 – Assassination attempt against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Dujail. (Missed it, by that much.)

1994 – Kim Jong-il begins to assume supreme leadership of North Korea upon the death of his father, Kim Il-sung.

2011 – Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched in the final mission (STS-135) of the U.S. Space Shuttle program.

Births

1831 – John Pemberton (invented Coca-Cola); 1838 – Eli Lilly; 1838 – Ferdinand von Zeppelin; 1839 – John D. Rockefeller (founded Standard Oil Company); 1885 – Hugo Boss; 1907 – George W. Romney (invented Mitt); 1908 – Louis Jordan (not Jourdan), Nelson Rockefeller; 1914 – Billy Eckstine; 1918 – Craig Stevens ("Peter Gunn"); 1930 – Jerry Vale; 1934 – Marty Feldman; 1935 – Steve Lawrence; 1944 - Jaimoe Johanson (Allman Bros Band); 1947 – Kim Darby ('Mattie Ross' in "True Grit"); 1948 – Raffi; 1949 – Wolfgang Puck; 1951 – Anjelica Huston; 1952 – Jack Lambert; 1957 – Carlos Cavazo (Quiet Riot, Ratt); 1958 – Kevin Bacon; 1961 – Toby Keith; 1962 – Joan Osborne; 1968 – Billy Crudup, Michael Weatherly ('Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo' on "NCIS"); 1970 – Beck; 1977 – Milo Ventimiglia

Deaths

1695 – Christiaan Huygens; 1822 – Percy Bysshe Shelley; 1988 – Ray Barbuti; 1990 – Howard Duff; 1991 – James Franciscus; 1994 – Kim Il-sung; 1994 – Dick Sargent; 1999 – Pete Conrad (3rd man to walk on the moon (supposedly)); 2006 – June Allyson; 2011 – Betty Ford; 2012 – Ernest Borgnine; 2015 – Ken 'The Snake' Stabler

July 9

869 – A magnitude 8.6 Ms earthquake and subsequent tsunami strikes the area around Sendai in the northern part of Honshu, Japan.

1755 – The Braddock Expedition is soundly defeated by a smaller French and native American force in its attempt to capture Fort Duquesne in what is now downtown Pittsburgh.

1776 – George Washington orders the Declaration of Independence to be read out to members of the Continental Army in Manhattan, while thousands of British troops on Staten Island prepare for the Battle of Long Island.

1810 – Napoleon annexes the Kingdom of Holland as part of the First French Empire.

1850 – U.S. President Zachary Taylor dies after eating raw fruit and iced milk, to be succeeded by Millard Fillmore.

1864 – Franz Muller commits the first known murder on a British train.

1868 – The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing African Americans full citizenship and all persons in the United States due process of law.

1877 – The inaugural Wimbledon Championships begins.

1903 – Future Soviet leader Joseph Stalin is exiled to Siberia for three years.

1918 – In Nashville, Tennessee, an inbound local train collides with an outbound express, killing 101 and injuring 171 people, making it the deadliest rail accident in United States history.

1943 – The Allied invasion of Sicily soon causes the downfall of Mussolini and forces Hitler to break off the Battle of Kursk.

1958 – A 7.8 Mw strike-slip earthquake in Alaska causes a landslide that produces a megatsunami. The runup from the waves reached 525 m (1,722 ft) on the rim of Lituya Bay. Due to the remote location, only five people were killed.

Johnny Cash signed with Columbia Records, where he would remain for the next 30 years releasing over 60 albums.

1962 - Bob Dylan recorded 'Blowin' In the Wind' at Columbia Recording Studios in New York City during an afternoon session.

1971, David Bowie started recording sessions at Trident Studios in London, for what would become the concept album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. The character of Ziggy was initially inspired by British rock 'n' roll singer Vince Taylor, whom Bowie met after Taylor had had a breakdown and believed himself to be a cross between a god and an alien.

1972 – The Troubles: In Belfast, British Army snipers shoot five civilians dead in the Springhill Massacre.

Paul McCartney and Wings played their very first show in the small French town of Chateauvillon. The band included Denny Laine, Denny Seiwell, Henry McCullough and Paul's wife, Linda. It was McCartney's first time on the road since The Beatles quit touring in 1966. The band travelled on a double decker London bus with a psychedelic interior.

1977 - Elvis Costello quit his day job at Elizabeth Arden Cosmetics to become a full time musician.

1981 – Donkey Kong, a video game created by Nintendo, is released. The game marks the debut of Nintendo's future mascot, Mario.

1995 - The Grateful Dead gave their last concert with leader Jerry Garcia at Chicago's Soldier Field. Jerry would die of a heart attack a month later while in drug rehab.

Births

1819 – Elias Howe (invented the sewing machine); 1907 – Eddie Dean; 1927 – Ed Ames; 1928 – Vince Edwards ("Ben Casey"); 1929 – Jesse McReynolds (Jim & Jesse); 1932 – Donald Rumsfeld; 1934 – Michael Graves; 1938 – Brian Dennehy; 1942 – Richard Roundtree (he's a bad mothershutyomouth); 1945 – Dean Koontz; 1946 – Bon Scott:devil:; 1947 – Mitch Mitchell, O. J. Simpson; 1951 – Chris Cooper; 1952 – John Tesh; 1954 – Kevin O'Leary ("Shark Tank")1955 – Lindsey Graham, Jimmy Smits; 1956 – Tom Hanks; 1957 – Marc Almond, Tim Kring, Kelly McGillis, Paul Merton; 1964 – Courtney Love; 1965 – Frank Bello (Anthrax, Helmet); 1966 – Pamela Adlon ("Californication"); 1975 – Jack White; 1976 – Fred Savage

Deaths

1228 – Stephen Langton; 1850 – Zachary Taylor; 1932 – King Camp Gillette (the razor guy); 1974 – Earl Warren; 1985 – Jimmy Kinnon (founded Narcotics Anonymous); 1992 – Eric Sevareid; 1996 – Melvin Belli; 2002 – Rod Steiger; 2004 – Isabel Sanford; 2005 – Kevin Hagen (Dr. on "Little House on the Prairie"); 2006 – Milan Williams (Commodores); 2011 – Würzel (Motorhead); 2013 – Toshi Seeger (wife to Pete Seeger); 2014 – Eileen Ford (Ford Modeling Agency), John Spinks (The Outfield); 2015 – Saud bin Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud

July 10

Today, followers of Meher Baba observe Silence Day, maintaining verbal silence for 24 hours.

138 – Emperor Hadrian dies of heart failure at Baiae; he is buried at Rome in the Tomb of Hadrian beside his late wife, Vibia Sabina.

988 – The Norse King Glúniairn recognizes Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill, High King of Ireland, and agrees to pay taxes and accept Brehon Law; the event is considered to be the founding of the city of Dublin.

1212 – The most severe of several early fires of London burns most of the city to the ground.

1499 – The Portuguese explorer Nicolau Coelho returns to Lisbon after discovering the sea route to India as a companion of Vasco da Gama.

1553 – Lady Jane Grey takes the throne of England.

1789 – Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Mackenzie River delta.

1821 – The United States takes possession of its newly bought territory, Florida, from Spain.

1850 – U.S. President Millard Fillmore is sworn in, a day after becoming President upon Zachary Taylor's death.

1882 – War of the Pacific: Chile suffers its last military defeat in the Battle of La Concepción when a garrison of 77 men is annihilated by a 1,300-strong Peruvian force, many of them armed with spears.

1890 – Wyoming is admitted as the 44th U.S. state.

1913 – The temperature in Death Valley, California, hits 134° F (57° C), the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth.

1925 – Meher Baba begins his silence of 44 years. His followers observe Silence Day on this date in commemoration.

Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins of John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher accused of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act.

1938 – Howard Hughes sets a new record by completing a 91-hour airplane flight around the world.

1950 - The US music show Your Hit Parade premiered on NBC-TV.

1962 – Telstar, the world's first communications satellite, is launched into orbit.

1968 - Eric Clapton announced that Cream would break-up after their current tour. The group's third album, Wheels of Fire, was the world's first platinum-selling double album and Cream are widely regarded as being the world's first successful supergroup.

1972 - Harry Nilsson's eighth album, Son of Schmilsson was released. It featured George Harrison under the name George Harrysong and Ringo Starr, listed as Richie Snare, on some of the tracks. Peter Frampton also played guitar on most of the album.

1973 – John Paul Getty III, a grandson of the oil magnate J. Paul Getty, is kidnapped in Rome, Italy.

1976 – The Seveso disaster occurs in Italy.

One American and three British mercenaries are executed in Angola following the Luanda Trial.

1978 – ABC World News Tonight premieres on ABC.

1984 - Session drummer and former member of Derek and the Dominos, Jim Gordon, was sentenced to 16 years to life in prison after being found guilty of murdering his mother. It was after he was arrested that he was properly diagnosed with schizophrenia and, although at the trial the court accepted that Gordon had acute schizophrenia, he was not allowed to use an insanity defense because of changes to California law.

1985 – The Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior is bombed and sunk in Auckland harbour by French DGSE agents, killing Fernando Pereira.

1991 – Boris Yeltsin takes office as the first elected President of Russia.

1992 – In Miami, former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega is sentenced to 40 years in prison for drug and racketeering violations.

1997 – In London, scientists report the findings of the DNA analysis of a Neanderthal skeleton which supports the "out of Africa theory" of human evolution, placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

1998 – Catholic Church sexual abuse cases: The Diocese of Dallas agrees to pay $23.4 million to nine former altar boys who claimed they were sexually abused by Rudolph Kos, a former priest.

2002 – At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens' painting The Massacre of the Innocents is sold for £49.5 million (US$76.2 million) to Lord Thomson.

2007 – Erden Eruç begins the first solo human-powered circumnavigation of the world.

Births

1830 – Camille Pissarro; 1834 – James Abbott McNeill Whistler; 1839 – Adolphus Busch (co-founded Anheuser-Busch); 1856 – Nikola Tesla; 1871 – Marcel Proust; 1875 – Mary McLeod Bethune; 1897 – Legs Diamond; 1914 – Joe Shuster (co-created Superman); 1917 – Don Herbert (Mr. Wizard); 1920 – David Brinkley; 1921 – Harvey Ball (created the 'Smiley' face), Jeff Donnell, Jake LaMotta, Eunice Kennedy Shriver (co-founded the Special Olympics); 1926 – Fred Gwynne; 1927 – David Dinkins; 1928 – Alejandro de Tomaso; 1931 – Alice Munro; 1939 – Mavis Staples; 1942 – Ronnie James Dio:devil:; 1943 – Arthur Ashe; 1945 – Ron Glass; 1947 – Arlo Guthrie; 1949 – Greg Kihn, John Whitehead (McFadden & Whitehead); 1954 – Neil Tennant; 1958 – Béla Fleck (has the distinction of being Grammy-nominated in more categories than any other musician); 1964 – Urban Meyer; 1965 – Ken Mellons; 1970 – Gary LeVox (Rascal Flatts); 1972 – Sofía Vergara; 1976 – Elijah Blue Allman (son of Cher & Gregg Allman); 1977 – Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years A Slave); 1980 – Adam Petty (son of Richard Petty); 1980 – Jessica Simpson

Deaths

138 – Hadrian; 1851 – Louis Daguerre; 1941 – Jelly Roll Morton; 1987 – John Hammond; 1989 – Mel Blanc; 2015 – Roger Rees, Omar Sharif

The Cellar ate today's post. Today's yard-long-took-god-damn-near-a-hour-and-a-half-to-make fucking post.

Fuck.

Sorry, Grav.

What glatt said. I know that sux.

July 12

Today is The Twelfth, in Northern Ireland.

1543 – King Henry VIII of England marries his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, at Hampton Court Palace.

1561 – Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow is consecrated.

1776 – Captain James Cook begins his third voyage.

1789 – In response to the dismissal of the French finance minister Jacques Necker, the radical journalist Camille Desmoulins gives a speech which results in the storming of the Bastille two days later.

1804 – Former United States Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton dies a day after being shot in a duel.

1862 – The Medal of Honor is authorized by the United States Congress.

1962 – The Rolling Stones perform their first concert, at the Marquee Club in London.

1963 – Pauline Reade, who was 16 years old, disappears on her way to a dance at the British Railways Club in Gorton, England, the first victim in the Moors murders.

1973 – A fire destroys the entire sixth floor of the National Personnel Records Center of the United States.

1989 – Lotte World Adventure opened in Seoul, South Korea.

2007 – U.S. Army Apache helicopters perform airstrikes in Baghdad, Iraq; footage from the cockpit is later leaked to the Internet.

2012 - Pollstar magazine announced that former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters had grossed $158.1 million in concert ticket sales worldwide so far this year with The Wall Live show.

Births

1730 – Josiah Wedgwood (Wedgwood china); 1817 – Henry David Thoreau; 1854 – George Eastman (founded Eastman Kodak); 1880 – Tod Browning; 1884 – Louis B. Mayer (co-founded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer); 1895 – Buckminster Fuller, Oscar Hammerstein II; 1908 – Milton Berle; 1909 – Joe DeRita ('Curly Joe' (not to be confusede with 'Curly') from The Three Stooges); 1917 – Andrew Wyeth; 1929 – Monte Hellman (directed Two Lane Blacktop); 1933 – Donald E. Westlake; 1934 – Van Cliburn; 1937 – Bill Cosby; 1941 – Benny Parsons:driving:; 1943 – Christine McVie:keys:; 1948 – Walter Egan("Magnet And Steel"), Richard Simmons; 1949 – Rick Hendrick (NASCAR Team owner); 1950 – Eric Carr:drummer:; 1951 – Cheryl Ladd; 1951 – Jamey Sheridan; 1952 – Philip Taylor Kramer; 1956 – Mel Harris, Sandi Patty; 1957 – Rick Husband; 1962 – Julio César Chávez:boxers:; 1971 – Kristi Yamaguchi; 1977 – Brock Lesnar

Deaths

1804 – Alexander Hamilton; 1849 – Dolley Madison; 1892 – Alexander Cartwright (invented baseball); 1910 – Charles Rolls (co-founded Rolls-Royce Limited); 1934 – Ole Evinrude (invented the outboard motor); 1935 – Alfred Dreyfus (Dreyfus Affair); 1944 – Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.; 1973 – Lon Chaney, Jr.; 1979 – Minnie Riperton; 1996 – John Chancellor; 1998 – Jimmy Driftwood; 2010 – Harvey Pekar; 2011 – Sherwood Schwartz; 2013 – Amar Bose (founded the Bose Corporation)

July 12

Today is The Twelfth, in Northern Ireland.

1543 – King Henry VIII of England marries his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, at Hampton Court Palace.

1561 – Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow is consecrated.

1776 – Captain James Cook begins his third voyage.

1789 – In response to the dismissal of the French finance minister Jacques Necker, the radical journalist Camille Desmoulins gives a speech which results in the storming of the Bastille two days later.

1804 – Former United States Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton dies a day after being shot in a duel.

1862 – The Medal of Honor is authorized by the United States Congress.

1962 – The Rolling Stones perform their first concert, at the Marquee Club in London.

1963 – Pauline Reade, who was 16 years old, disappears on her way to a dance at the British Railways Club in Gorton, England, the first victim in the Moors murders.

1973 – A fire destroys the entire sixth floor of the National Personnel Records Center of the United States.

1989 – Lotte World Adventure opened in Seoul, South Korea.

2007 – U.S. Army Apache helicopters perform airstrikes in Baghdad, Iraq; footage from the cockpit is later leaked to the Internet.

2012 - Pollstar magazine announced that former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters had grossed $158.1 million in concert ticket sales worldwide so far this year with The Wall Live show.

Births

1730 – Josiah Wedgwood (Wedgwood china); 1817 – Henry David Thoreau; 1854 – George Eastman (founded Eastman Kodak); 1880 – Tod Browning; 1884 – Louis B. Mayer (co-founded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer); 1895 – Buckminster Fuller, Oscar Hammerstein II; 1908 – Milton Berle; 1909 – Joe DeRita ('Curly Joe' (not to be confusede with 'Curly') from The Three Stooges); 1917 – Andrew Wyeth; 1929 – Monte Hellman (directed Two Lane Blacktop); 1933 – Donald E. Westlake; 1934 – Van Cliburn; 1937 – Bill Cosby; 1941 – Benny Parsons:driving:; 1943 – Christine McVie:keys:; 1948 – Walter Egan("Magnet And Steel"), Richard Simmons; 1949 – Rick Hendrick (NASCAR Team owner); 1950 – Eric Carr:drummer:; 1951 – Cheryl Ladd; 1951 – Jamey Sheridan; 1952 – Philip Taylor Kramer; 1956 – Mel Harris, Sandi Patty; 1957 – Rick Husband; 1962 – Julio César Chávez:boxers:; 1971 – Kristi Yamaguchi; 1977 – Brock Lesnar

Deaths

1804 – Alexander Hamilton; 1849 – Dolley Madison; 1892 – Alexander Cartwright (invented baseball); 1910 – Charles Rolls (co-founded Rolls-Royce Limited); 1934 – Ole Evinrude (invented the outboard motor); 1935 – Alfred Dreyfus (Dreyfus Affair); 1944 – Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.; 1973 – Lon Chaney, Jr.; 1979 – Minnie Riperton; 1996 – John Chancellor; 1998 – Jimmy Driftwood; 2010 – Harvey Pekar; 2011 – Sherwood Schwartz; 2013 – Amar Bose (founded the Bose Corporation)

July 13

1249 – Coronation of Alexander III as King of Scots.

1787 – The Continental Congress enacts the Northwest Ordinance establishing governing rules for the Northwest Territory. It also establishes procedures for the admission of new states and limits the expansion of slavery.

1793 – Journalist and French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat is assassinated in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday, a member of the opposing political faction.

1863 – New York City draft riots: In New York City, opponents of conscription begin three days of rioting which will be later regarded as the worst in United States history.

1919 – The British airship R34 lands in Norfolk, England, completing the first airship return journey across the Atlantic in 182 hours of flight.

1923 – The Hollywood Sign is officially dedicated in the hills above Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. It originally reads "Hollywoodland " but the four last letters are dropped after renovation in 1949.

1962 – In an unprecedented action, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan dismisses seven members of his Cabinet, marking the effective end of the National Liberals as a distinct force within British politics.

1968 - Black Sabbath played their first gig at a small backstreet blues club in Birmingham, England.

1969 - Over 100 US radio stations banned The Beatles' new single 'The Balled Of John and Yoko' due to the line "Christ, you know it ain't easy", calling it offensive.

1973 – Alexander Butterfield reveals the existence of the "Nixon tapes" to the special Senate committee investigating the Watergate break-in.

1978 - The BBC announced a ban on The Sex Pistols' latest single ‘No One Is Innocent’, which featured vocals by Ronnie Biggs, the British criminal notorious for his part in the Great Train Robbery of 1963. At the time of the recording, Biggs was living in Brazil, and was still wanted by the British authorities, but immune from extradition.

1985 – The Live Aid benefit concert takes place in London and Philadelphia, as well as other venues such as Sydney and Moscow.

Duran Duran became the first artists to have a No.1 on the US singles chart with a James Bond theme when 'A View To A Kill', went to the top of the charts.

1990 - Curtis Mayfield was badly injured after a strong gust of wind blew a lighting rig on him during an outside concert in Brooklyn, New York.

1996, Over 2,000 guitar players, including Chet Atkins and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, set a new world record for the largest jam session ever when they played 'Heartbreak Hotel' for 75 minutes at Nashville's Riverfront Park. The previous record was set in Vancouver, Canada on May 7th, 1994, when Randy Bachman led 1,322 amateur guitarists in a performance that lasted 68 minutes.

1997, Red Hot Chili Peppers' singer Anthony Kiedis underwent five hours of hospital surgery after being involved in a motorbike accident in Los Angeles.

A trial against John Denver for drunken driving ended in a hung jury, deadlocked 3-3. Denver's defense attorney argued that the singer suffered from a thyroid condition that had distorted blood alcohol tests.

2004, Arthur ‘Killer’ Kane, bass player with The New York Dolls, died aged 55 after checking himself in to a Los Angeles emergency room, complaining of fatigue. He was quickly diagnosed with leukemia, and died within two hours.

2013 – George Zimmerman is found not guilty in the shooting of Trayvon Martin.

2016 – Theresa May succeeds David Cameron and becomes the second female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Births

1745 – Robert Calder; 1821 – Nathan Bedford Forrest; 1864 – John Jacob Astor IV; 1913 – Dave Garroway; 1924 – Johnny Gilbert; 1928 – Bob Crane; 1935 – Jack Kemp; 1940 – Paul Prudhomme, Patrick Stewart; 1941 – Robert Forster; 1942 – Harrison Ford, Roger McGuinn; 1944 – Ernő Rubik (cube guy); 1946 – Cheech Marin:fumette:; 1948 – Daphne Maxwell Reid (Fresh Prince of Bel Air); 1951 – Didi Conn; 1954 – Louise Mandrell; 1956 – Michael Spinks; 1957 – Cameron Crowe, Phil Margera (Bam's father); 1962 – Rhonda Vincent; 1963 – Spud Webb; 1964 – Paul Thorn; 1966 – Gerald Levert

Deaths

1793 – Jean-Paul Marat; 1882 – Johnny Ringo; 1890 – John C. Frémont; 1893 – Young Man Afraid of His Horses; 1946 – Alfred Stieglitz; 1954 – Frida Kahlo; 1967 – Tom Simpson; 1993 – Davey Allison:driving:; 2004 – Arthur Kane; 2006 – Red Buttons; 2010 – George Steinbrenner; 2012 – Richard D. Zanuck; 2013 – Cory Monteith

July 14

Today is Bastille Day, in France, celebrating The Storming of the Bastille, in 1789, the flashpoint of the French Revolution.

1223 – Louis VIII becomes King of France upon the death of his father, Philip II.

1769 – An expedition led by Gaspar de Portolá establishes a base in California and sets out to find the Port of Monterey (now Monterey, California).

1771 – Foundation of the Mission San Antonio de Padua in modern California by the Franciscan friar Junípero Serra.

1789 – French Revolution: Citizens of Paris storm the Bastille.

Alexander Mackenzie finally completes his journey to the mouth of the great river he hoped would take him to the Pacific, but which turns out to flow into the Arctic Ocean. Later named after him, the Mackenzie is the second-longest river system in North America.

1790 – French Revolution: Citizens of Paris celebrate the unity of the French people and the national reconciliation in the Fête de la Fédération.

1798 – The Sedition Act becomes law in the United States making it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the United States government.

1853 – Opening of the first major US world's fair, the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in New York City.

1881 – Billy the Kid is shot and killed by Pat Garrett outside Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

1902 – The Campanile in St. Mark's Square, Venice collapses, also demolishing the loggetta.

1916 – Start of the Battle of Delville Wood as an action within the Battle of the Somme, which was to last until 3 September 1916.

1933 – The Nazi eugenics begins with the proclamation of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring that calls for the compulsory sterilization of any citizen who suffers from alleged genetic disorders.

1943 – In Diamond, Missouri, the George Washington Carver National Monument becomes the first United States National Monument in honor of an African American.

1960 – Jane Goodall arrives at the Gombe Stream Reserve in present-day Tanzania to begin her famous study of chimpanzees in the wild.

1962 - The Beatles played their first ever gig in Wales when they appeared at The Regent Dansette in Rhyl. Tickets cost five shillings, ($0.70).

1965 – The Mariner 4 flyby of Mars takes the first close-up photos of another planet.

1969 – The United States $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills are officially withdrawn from circulation.

1973 - A drunk driver killed Clarence White of The Byrds while he was loading equipment after a gig in Palmdale, California.

During a concert at the John Wayne Theatre in Hollywood, California, Phil Everly smashed his guitar and stormed of stage, Don finished the set by himself and announced that The Everly Brothers had split. This was the last time that the duo performed together for nearly ten years.

1976 – Capital punishment is abolished in Canada.

1982 - The movie premier for Pink Floyd's The Wall was held at The Empire, Leicester Square, London, England. The film, which centers around a confined rocker named Floyd "Pink" Pinkerton, earned $22 million in its first year and won two British Academy Awards.

1984 - Phillippe Wynne lead singer with The Detroit Spinners (Working My Way Back To You) suffered a heart attack while performing at Ivey's nightclub in Oakland, California, and died the next morning, aged 43.

1989 - Tom Jones lost a paternity suit and was ordered to pay $200 a week in child support to 27 year old Katherine Berkery, of New York. The judge in the case was Judge Judy Sheindlin, tv's "Judge Judy".

2000 – A powerful solar flare, later named the Bastille Day event, causes a geomagnetic storm on Earth.

2002 – French President Jacques Chirac escapes an assassination attempt unscathed during Bastille Day celebrations.

2003 – In an effort to discredit U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who had written an article critical of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Washington Post columnist Robert Novak reveals that Wilson's wife Valerie Plame is a CIA "operative".

2015 – NASA's New Horizons probe performs the first flyby of Pluto, and thus completes the initial survey of the Solar System.

Arthur Cave, the 15-year-old son of musician Nick Cave, died after a fall from a cliff in Brighton, Sussex, England.

The Las Vegas coroner's office confirmed that B.B. King died of natural causes primarily stemming from Alzheimer's disease and was not murdered. Two of his daughters had alleged King was poisoned by long-time associates.

Births

1860 – Owen Wister (author The Virginian); 1894 – Dave Fleischer; 1898 –A.B. "Happy" Chandler; 1901 – George Tobias (neighbor 'Kravitz' on Bewitched); 1910 – William Hanna (Hanna-Barbera); 1912 – Woody Guthrie; 1913 – Gerald Ford; 1918 – Ingmar Bergman; 1922 – Robin Olds; 1923 – Dale Robertson; 1926 – Harry Dean Stanton; 1927 – John Chancellor, Mike Esposito (comic book illustrator); 1928 – Nancy Olson (Sunset Boulevard); 1930 – Polly Bergen; 1932 – Rosey Grier; 1938 – Jerry Rubin; 1939 – Sid Haig:devil:; 1943 – Christopher Priest; 1945 – Jim Gordon; 1946 – Vincent Pastore ('Big Pussy' on The Sopranos); 1949 – Tommy Mottola; 1952 – Bob Casale (Devo); 1952 – Eric Laneuville (St. Elsewhere); 1960 – Kyle Gass (half of duo Tenacious D), Jane Lynch; 1966 – Matthew Fox ('Jack' on Lost); 1975 – Jamey Johnson; 1978 - Ruben Studdard; 1981 – Robbie Maddison (motorcycle stunt rider); 1988 – Conor McGregor:devil: (MMA fighter)

Deaths

1881 – Billy the Kid; 1998 – Richard McDonald (co-founded McDonald's, with his brother Maurice, and Ray Kroc); 2000 – Meredith MacRae; 2013 – Dennis Burkley

July 15

1099 – First Crusade: Christian soldiers take the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem after the final assault of a difficult siege.

1149 – The reconstructed Church of the Holy Sepulchre is consecrated in Jerusalem.

1381 – John Ball, a leader in the Peasants' Revolt, is hanged, drawn and quartered in the presence of King Richard II of England.

1741 – Aleksei Chirikov sights land in Southeast Alaska. He sends men ashore in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to visit Alaska.

1799 – The Rosetta Stone is found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard during Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign.

1806 – Pike expedition: United States Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike begins an expedition from Fort Bellefontaine near St. Louis, Missouri, to explore the west.

1834 – The Spanish Inquisition is officially disbanded after nearly 356 years.

1870 – Reconstruction Era of the United States: Georgia becomes the last of the former Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.

1910 – In his book Clinical Psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin gives a name to Alzheimer's disease, naming it after his colleague Alois Alzheimer.

1916 – In Seattle, Washington, William Boeing and George Conrad Westervelt incorporate Pacific Aero Products (later renamed Boeing).

1954 – First flight of the Boeing 367-80, prototype for both the Boeing 707 and C-135 series.

1959 – The steel strike of 1959 begins, leading to significant importation of foreign steel for the first time in United States history.

1966 – Vietnam War: The United States and South Vietnam begin Operation Hastings to push the North Vietnamese out of the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone.

1985 - Nude photos of Madonna taken in 1977 appeared in this months Playboy and Penthouse Magazines.

1998 - Aerosmith were forced to cancel a forthcoming US tour after Joey Kramer was involved in a freak accident. The drummer's car caught fire and was completely destroyed as he was filling up with petrol. He was admitted to hospital with second-degree burns.

2002 – "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh pleads guilty to supplying aid to the enemy and to possession of explosives during the commission of a felony.

Anti-Terrorism Court of Pakistan hands down the death sentence to British born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and life terms to three others suspected of murdering The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

2003 – AOL Time Warner disbands Netscape. The Mozilla Foundation is established on the same day.

2005, Victor Edward Willis, the original policeman in the Village People, was arrested after police found a gun and drugs in his convertible in Daly City, south of San Francisco. Willis also had an outstanding $15,000 felony warrant for possession of narcotics.

2006 – Twitter is launched, becoming one of the largest social media platforms in the world.

2015 - A judge trimmed more than $1m (£639,000) from the damages Pharrell Williams was ordered to pay after the Blurred Lines copyright trial. The case revolved around the question of whether Williams and his co-writer Robin Thicke had copied Marvin Gaye's 1977 hit 'Got To Give It Up'. The judge also gave Gaye's family a 50% cut of future earnings from the song.

Births

1573 – Inigo Jones; 1606 – Rembrandt; 1779 – Clement Clarke Moore; 1796 – Thomas Bulfinch; 1913 – Cowboy Copas; 1919 – Iris Murdoch; 1925 – Philip Carey ('Asa Buchanon' on One Life To Live); 1931 – Clive Cussler; 1935 – Alex Karras, Ken Kercheval; 1940 – Ronald Gene Simmons; 1944 – Millie Jackson, Jan-Michael Vincent; 1946 – Linda Ronstadt; 1947 – Peter Banks (Yes); 1948 – Artimus Pyle; 1950 – Arianna Huffington; 1951 – Jesse 'The Body' Ventura; 1952 – Marky Ramone, Johnny Thunders, Jeff Carlisi (.38 Special); 1953 – Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Alicia Bridges (I Love The Night Life); 1956 – Joe Satriani; 1961 – Lolita Davidovich, Forest Whitaker; 1963 – Brigitte Nielsen; 1966 – Jason Bonham; 1967 – Adam Savage (Mythbusters); 1968 – Eddie Griffin; 1972 – Scott Foley; 1973 – Brian Austin Green

Deaths

1381 – John Ball; 1871 – Tad Lincoln; 1904 – Anton Chekhov; 1940 – Robert Wadlow (8' 11'' tall:eek:); 1948 – John J. Pershing; 1958 – Julia Lennon (John's mother); 1991 – Bert Convy; 1997 – Gianni Versace; 2003 – Tex Schramm; 2006 – Robert H. Brooks (founded Hooters); 2012 – Celeste Holm; 2015 – Aubrey Morris (A Clockwork Orange)

July 16

622 – The beginning of the Islamic calendar.

1377 – Richard II of England is crowned.

1661 – The first banknotes in Europe are issued by the Swedish bank Stockholms Banco.

1769 – Father Junípero Serra founds California's first mission, Mission San Diego de Alcalá. Over the following decades, it evolves into the city of San Diego, California.

1782 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail is first performed.

1790 – The District of Columbia is established as the capital of the United States after signature of the Residence Act.

1861 – American Civil War: At the order of President Abraham Lincoln, Union troops begin a 25-mile march into Virginia for what will become the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major land battle of the war.

1862 – American Civil War: David Farragut is promoted to rear admiral, becoming the first officer in United States Navy to hold the rank of Admiral.

1900 - His Master's Voice, the logo of the Victor Recording Company and later RCA Victor, was registered with the US Patent Office. The logo shows the dog, Nipper, looking into the horn of a gramophone.

1910 – John Robertson Duigan makes the first flight of the Duigan pusher biplane, the first aircraft built in Australia.

1915 – The first Order of the Arrow ceremony takes place and the Order of the Arrow is founded to honor American Boy Scouts who best exemplify the Scout Oath and Law.

1927 – Augusto César Sandino leads a raid on U.S. Marines and Nicaraguan Guardia Nacional that had been sent to apprehend him in the village of Ocotal, but is repulsed by one of the first dive-bombing attacks in history.

1935 – The world's first parking meter is installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

1941 – Joe DiMaggio hits safely for the 56th consecutive game, a streak that still stands as a MLB record.

1945 – World War II: The heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis leaves San Francisco with parts for the atomic bomb "Little Boy" bound for Tinian Island.

Manhattan Project: The Atomic Age begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon near Alamogordo, New Mexico.

1948 – The storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane marks the first aircraft hijacking of a commercial plane.

1951 – The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger is published for the first time.

1956 – Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus closes its last "Big Tent" show in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

1960 – USS George Washington, a modified Skipjack-class submarine, successfully launches the first SLBM while submerged.

1965 – The Mont Blanc Tunnel, linking France and Italy, opens.

1966 - Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton formed Cream. The three piece group only lasted 2 years.

1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 11, the first mission to land astronauts on the Moon, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Kennedy, Florida.

1979 – Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr resigns and is replaced by Saddam Hussein.

1981 - US singer-songwriter Harry Chapin, who had success in the 70s with 'Taxi’, ‘W-O-L-D’ and a No. 1 ‘Cat’s In The Cradle’, was killed, aged 38, after suffering cardiac arrest while driving on a New York expressway. His car was hit from behind by a tractor-trailer, causing the gas tank to explode.

1990 – The Parliament of the Ukrainian SSR declares state sovereignty over the territory of the Ukrainian SSR.

1991 – Ukraine celebrates its first Independence Day. And there was much rejoicing.

1994 – Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 collides with Jupiter. Impacts continue until July 22.

1999 – John F. Kennedy Jr., piloting a Piper Saratoga aircraft, dies when his plane crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. His wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette are also killed.

2007, The White Stripes played their 'shortest live show ever' at George Street, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. Jack White played a single C# note accompanied by a bass drum/crash cymbal hit from Meg. At the end of the show, Jack announced, "We have now officially played in every province and territory in Canada." They then left the stage and performed a full show later that night in St John's.

2008 – Sixteen infants in Gansu Province, China, who had been fed on tainted milk powder, are diagnosed with kidney stones; in total, an estimated 300,000 infants are affected.

2009 - A stage being built in France for a concert by Madonna collapsed, killing two workers and injuring six others. Technicians had been setting up the stage at the Velodrome stadium in Marseille when the partially-built roof fell in, bringing down a crane.

2013 – As many as 27 children die and 25 others are hospitalized after eating lunch served at their school in eastern India.

2015 – Four U.S. Marines and one gunman die in a shooting spree targeting military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Births

1821 – Mary Baker Eddy; 1872 – Roald Amundsen; 1880 – Kathleen Norris; 1887 – Shoeless Joe Jackson; 1907 – Orville Redenbacher, Barbara Stanwyck; 1911 – Ginger Rogers; 1915 – Barnard Hughes; 1924 – Bess Myerson; 1932 – Dick Thornburgh; 1943 – Jimmy Johnson; 1948 – Rubén Blades; 1952 – Stewart Copeland:drummer:; 1958 – Michael Flatley; 1963 – Phoebe Cates; 1964 – Melissa Monet; 1967 – Will Ferrell; 1968 – Barry Sanders; 1968 – Larry Sanger (co-founded Wikipedia:devil:); 1971 – Corey Feldman; 1980 – Jesse Jane, Justine Joli

Deaths

1557 – Anne of Cleves; 1882 – Mary Todd Lincoln; 1886 – Ned Buntline; 1981 – Harry Chapin; 1996 – John Panozzo:drummer:; 1999 – Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Jr.; 2010 – James Gammon; 2012 – Bob Babbitt:bass:; 2012 – Jon Lord:keys:, Kitty Wells; 2013 – T-Model Ford; 2014 – Johnny Winter

July 17

180 – Twelve inhabitants of Scillium (near Kasserine in modern-day Tunisia) in North Africa are executed for being Christians. This is the earliest record of Christianity in that part of the world.

1429 – Hundred Years' War: Charles VII of France is crowned the King of France in the Reims Cathedral after a successful campaign by Joan of Arc.

1717 – King George I of Great Britain sails down the River Thames with a barge of 50 musicians, where George Frideric Handel's Water Music is premiered.

1762 – Catherine The Great becomes tsar of Russia upon the murder of Peter III of Russia.

1856 – The Great Train Wreck of 1856 in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, kills over 60 people.

1899 – NEC Corporation is organized as the first Japanese joint venture with foreign capital.

1902 – Willis Carrier creates the first air conditioner in Buffalo, New York.

1917 – King George V issues a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British Royal Family will bear the surname Windsor.

1918 – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his immediate family and retainers are executed by Bolshevik Chekists at the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

The RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, is sunk off Ireland by the German SM U-55; five lives are lost.

1933 – After successfully crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the Lithuanian research aircraft Lituanica crashes in Europe under mysterious circumstances.

1938 – Douglas Corrigan takes off from Brooklyn to fly the "wrong way" to Ireland and becomes known as "Wrong Way" Corrigan.

1944 – World War II: Napalm incendiary bombs are dropped for the first time by American P-38 pilots on a fuel depot at Coutances, near Saint-Lô, France.

1945 – World War II: The main three leaders of the Allied nations, Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin, meet in the German city of Potsdam to decide the future of a defeated Germany.

1955 – Disneyland is dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California.

1959 - Billie Holiday died in a New York City hospital from cirrhosis of the liver after years of alcohol abuse, aged 43. (While under arrest for heroin possession, with police officers stationed at the door to her room.) In the final years of her life, she had been progressively swindled out of her earnings, and she died with $0.70 in the bank.

1975 – Apollo–Soyuz Test Project: An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock with each other in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.

1981 – The opening of the Humber Bridge by Queen Elizabeth II in England.

A structural failure leads to the collapse of a walkway at the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, Missouri killing 114 people and injuring more than 200.

1989 – First flight of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber.

1996 – TWA Flight 800: Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 explodes, killing all 230 on board.

2001 – Concorde is brought back in to service nearly a year after the July 2000 crash.

2014 – Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777, crashes near the border of Ukraine and Russia after being shot down. All 298 people on board are killed.

Births

1763 – John Jacob Astor; 1839 – Ephraim Shay (Shay locomotive); 1889 – Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason); 1899 – James Cagney; 1912 – Art Linkletter; 1917 – Phyllis Diller; 1918 – Red Sovine; 1923 – John Cooper (co-founded the Cooper Car Company); 1935 – Diahann Carroll, Donald Sutherland; 1939 – Spencer Davis; 1949 – Geezer Butler:bass:; 1951 – Lucie Arnaz; 1952 – David Hasselhoff, Nicolette Larson; 1954 – Angela Merkel; 1957 – Bruce Crump:drummer:; 1963 – John Ventimiglia ('Artie Bucco' on The Sopranos); 1964 – Heather Langenkamp; 1965 – Craig Morgan; 1965 – Alex Winter ('Bill' from Bill & Ted movies); 1968 – Bitty Schram; 1976 – Luke Bryan; 1979 – Mike Vogel ('Barbie' on Under the Dome)

Deaths

1881 – Jim Bridger; 1887 – Dorothea Dix; 1918 – Victims of the Shooting of the Romanov family; 1959 – Billie Holiday; 1961 – Ty Cobb; 1967 – John Coltrane; 1974 – Dizzy Dean; 1980 – Don "Red" Barry; 1988 – Bruiser Brody; 1995 – Juan Manuel Fangio:driving:; 1996 – Chas Chandler:bass:; 2001 – Katharine Graham (WaPo publisher); 2005 – Geraldine Fitzgerald; 2006 – Mickey Spillane; 2009 – Walter Cronkite; 2014 – Elaine Stritch

July 18

64 – The Great Fire of Rome causes widespread devastation and rages on for six days, destroying half of the city.

1290 – King Edward I of England issues the Edict of Expulsion, banishing all Jews (numbering about 16,000) from England; this was Tisha B'Av on the Hebrew calendar, a day that commemorates many Jewish calamities.

1391 – Tokhtamysh–Timur war: Battle of the Kondurcha River: Timur defeats Tokhtamysh of the Golden Horde in present-day southeast Russia.

1914 – The U.S. Congress forms the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps, giving official status to aircraft within the U.S. Army for the first time.

1925 – Adolf Hitler publishes his personal manifesto Mein Kampf.

1942 – World War II: The Germans test fly the Messerschmitt Me 262 using its jet engines for the first time.

1953 - Truck driver Elvis Presley made his first ever recording when he paid $3.98 at the Memphis Recording Service, singing two songs, 'My Happiness' and 'That's When Your Heartaches Begin'.

1966 – Human spaceflight: Gemini 10 is launched from Cape Kennedy on a 70-hour mission that includes docking with an orbiting Agena target vehicle.

1966 – Australian children's television series Play School airs for the first time, going on to become the longest-running children's show in Australia, and the second longest running children's show in the world.

1968 – Intel is founded in Mountain View, California.

1969 – After a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts drives his car off a bridge, his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, dies.

1972 - Members from Sly and the Family Stone were arrested after police found two pounds of marijuana in the group's motor home.

1976 – Nadia Comăneci becomes the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics, at the 1976 Summer Olympics.

1978 - Def Leppard made their live debut at Westfield School, Sheffield, England in front of 150 students.

1984 – McDonald's massacre in San Ysidro, California: In a fast-food restaurant, James Oliver Huberty opens fire, killing 21 people and injuring 19 others before being shot dead by police.

1986 – A tornado is broadcast live on KARE television in Minnesota when the station's helicopter pilot makes a chance encounter.

1988 - Nico died after suffering a minor heart attack while riding a bicycle on holiday with her son in Ibiza, Spain.

Ike Turner was sentenced in Santa Monica, California to one year in jail for possessing and transporting cocaine. Police had stopped Turner, former husband of Tina Turner, in August 1987 for driving erratically and found about six grams of rock cocaine in his car.

1992, Bobby Brown married Whitney Houston at her New Jersey estate who was dressed in a $40,000 Marc Bouwer wedding gown.

1995 – On the Caribbean island of Montserrat, the Soufrière Hills volcano erupts. Over the course of several years, it devastates the island, destroying the capital and forcing most of the population to flee.

2001 - KISS added another product to their ever-growing merchandising universe: the "Kiss Kasket." The coffin featured the faces of the four founding members of the band, the Kiss logo and the words "Kiss Forever." Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell was buried in one after he was shot and killed on-stage in Dec 2004.

2013 – The Government of Detroit, Michigan, with up to $20 billion in debt, files for the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Births

1811 – William Makepeace Thackeray; 1886 – Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.; 1887 – Vidkun Quisling; 1895 – Machine Gun Kelly; 1903 – Chill Wills; 1906 – Clifford Odets; 1908 – Peace Pilgrim; 1909 – Andrei Gromyko, Harriet Nelson; 1911 – Hume Cronyn; 1913 – Red Skelton; 1918 – Nelson Mandela; 1921 – John Glenn; 1927 – Kurt Masur; 1929 – Dick Button (snicker), Screamin' Jay Hawkins; 1930 – Burt Kwouk ('Cato' in the Pink Panther movies); 1937 – Hunter S. Thompson:devil:; 1938 – Paul Verhoeven (director RoboCop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers, Basic Instinct); 1939 – Dion DiMucci (Dion and The Belmonts); 1940 – James Brolin, Joe Torre; 1941 – Lonnie Mack:shred:, Martha Reeves; 1947 – Steve Forbes; 1950 – Richard Branson, Glenn Hughes (the biker in Village People); 1954 – Ricky Skaggs; 1957 – Nick Faldo; 1960 – Anne-Marie Johnson ('Althea Tibbs' on In The Heat Of The Night); 1961 – Elizabeth McGovern; 1964 – Wendy Williams; 1967 – Vin Diesel; 1971 – Penny Hardaway; 1975 – Torii Hunter, M.I.A.; 1976 – Elsa Pataky:heartpump; 1980 – Kristen Bell

Deaths

1610 – Caravaggio; 1792 – John Paul Jones (no, not the bass player, there was another one); 1899 – Horatio Alger; 1944 – Thomas Sturge Moore; 1954 – Machine Gun Kelly; 1969 – Mary Jo Kopechne; 1988 – Nico; 2005 – William Westmoreland; 2015 – Alex Rocco

July 19

1545 – The Tudor warship Mary Rose sinks off Portsmouth; in 1982 the wreck is salvaged in one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology.

1553 – Lady Jane Grey is replaced by Mary I of England as Queen of England after only nine days on the throne.

1701 – Representatives of the Iroquois Confederacy sign the Nanfan Treaty, ceding a large territory north of the Ohio River to England.

1821 – Coronation of George IV of the United Kingdom.

1843 – Brunel's steamship the SS Great Britain is launched, becoming the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull and screw propeller, becoming the largest vessel afloat in the world.

1845 – Great New York City Fire of 1845: The last great fire to affect Manhattan began early in the morning and was subdued that afternoon. The fire killed 4 firefighters, 26 civilians, and destroyed 345 buildings.

1900 – The first line of the Paris Métro opens for operation.

1903 – Maurice Garin wins the first Tour de France.

1916 – World War I: Battle of Fromelles: British and Australian troops attack German trenches as part of the Battle of the Somme. "The worst 24 hours in Australia's entire history."

1919 – Following Peace Day celebrations marking the end of World War I, ex-servicemen riot and burn down Luton Town Hall.

1940 – World War II: Army order 112 forms the Intelligence Corps of the British Army.

1943 – World War II: Rome is heavily bombed by more than 500 Allied aircraft, inflicting thousands of casualties.

1963 – Joe Walker flies a North American X-15 to a record altitude of 106,010 meters (347,800 feet) on X-15 Flight 90. Exceeding an altitude of 100 km, this flight qualifies as a human spaceflight under international convention.

1979 – The Sandinista rebels overthrow the government of the Somoza family in Nicaragua.

1981 – In a private meeting with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, French Prime Minister François Mitterrand reveals the existence of the Farewell Dossier, a collection of documents showing that the Soviets had been stealing American technological research and development.

1983 – The first three-dimensional reconstruction of a human head in a CT scan is published.

1985 – The Val di Stava dam collapses killing 268 people in Val di Stava, Italy.

1989 – United Airlines Flight 232 crashes in Sioux City, Iowa (<---video link) killing 111. It is a miracle that 185 people survived this crash.

Births

1814 – Samuel Colt ("God created all men, Sam Colt made 'em equal."); 1834 – Edgar Degas; 1860 – Lizzie Borden; 1865 – Charles Horace Mayo (Mayo Clinic); 1883 – Max Fleischer; 1894 – Percy Spencer (inventor of the microwave oven); 1919 – Dallas McKennon; 1922 – George McGovern; 1924 – Pat Hingle; 1924 – Arthur Rankin Jr.; 1929 – Gaston Glock; 1937 – George Hamilton IV (not the tan one, there was another one); 1938 – Richard Jordan; 1940 – Dennis Cole; 1944 – Tim McIntire (sang Jeremiah Johnson in the movie of the same name); 1945 – George Dzundza; 1946 – Stephen Coonts; 1947 – Bernie Leadon:shred:, Brian May:shred:; 1948 – Keith Godchaux; 1952 – Allen Collins:shred:; 1961 – Lisa Lampanelli; 1962 – Anthony Edwards; 1968 – Jim Norton:lol2:; 1976 – Benedict Cumberbatch; 1987 – Jon Jones (MMA fighter)

Deaths

1374 – Petrarch; 1692 – Sarah Good; 1742 – William Somervile; 1965 – Syngman Rhee; 1975 – Lefty Frizzell; 2002 – Alan Lomax; 2006 – Jack Warden; 2009 – Frank McCourt; 2012 – Tom Davis ('Franken & Davis' from SNL); 2014 – James Garner

July 20

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.

1807 – Nicéphore Niépce is awarded a patent by Napoleon for the Pyréolophore, the world's first internal combustion engine, after it successfully powered a boat upstream on the river Saône in France.

1871 – British Columbia joins the confederation of Canada.

1903 – The Ford Motor Company ships its first car.

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.

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.

1940 – California opens its first freeway, the Arroyo Seco Parkway.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arroyo_Seco_Parkway.

Billboard's first comprehensive record chart was published.

1944 – World War II: Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt led by German Army Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.

1950 – Cold War: In Philadelphia, Harry Gold pleads guilty to spying for the Soviet Union by passing secrets from atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs.

1954 - The Blue Moon Boys made their live debut appearing on the back of a flatbed truck outside a new drug store for its grand opening in Memphis. The band line up was Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore, and Bill Black. The name was taken from a song they had recorded just two weeks previously, 'Blue Moon of Kentucky.'

1960 – Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) elects Sirimavo Bandaranaike Prime Minister, the world's first elected female head of government.

The Polaris missile is successfully launched from a submarine, the USS George Washington, for the first time.

1968 – The first International Special Olympics Summer Games are held at Soldier Field in Chicago, with about 1,000 athletes with intellectual disabilities.

1968, Iron Butterfly's second album, 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida', entered the US album chart for the first time. The album contained the 17-minute title track that filled the second side of the LP.

Jane Asher announced on the national British TV show, Dee Time, that her engagement to Paul McCartney was off. Paul reportedly was watching at a friend's home and was surprised by the news.

1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 11's crew successfully makes the first manned landing on the Moon in the Sea of Tranquility. Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon (July 21 UTC). Or not.

1976 – The American Viking 1 lander becomes the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars and perform its mission.

1977 – The Central Intelligence Agency releases documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind-control experiments.

1982 – Hyde Park and Regent's Park bombings: The Provisional IRA detonates two bombs in Hyde Park and Regent's Park in central London, killing eight soldiers, wounding forty-seven people, and leading to the deaths of seven horses.

1989 – Burma's ruling junta puts opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.

1992 – Václav Havel resigns as president of Czechoslovakia.

1997 – The fully restored USS Constitution (a.k.a. Old Ironsides) celebrates its 200th birthday by setting sail for the first time in 116 years.

2003 - A tooth said to have been pulled out of Elvis Presley's mouth after an injury failed to sell on the auction site eBay . The tooth had been put on a 10-day sale with a reserve price of $100,000 (£64,100).

2009 - Jackson Browne settled his lawsuit against US Senator John McCain and the Republican Party after his 1977 hit 'Running On Empty' was used without permission in a 2008 McCain presidential campaign ad that aired on TV and the Internet.

2012 – A shooter opened fire at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 and injuring 70 others.

2015 – The United States and Cuba resume full diplomatic relations after five decades.

Births

356 BC – Alexander the Great; 1304 – Petrarch; 1822 – Gregor Mendel; 1847 – Max Liebermann; 1918 – Cindy Walker♪ ♫; 1919 – Edmund Hillary; 1929 – Mike Ilitch (co-founder Little Caesars pizza); 1933 – Cormac McCarthy; 1938 – Diana Rigg ('Emma Peel' in The Avengers), Natalie Wood; 1943 – Wendy Richard (Are You Being Served, EastEnders); 1945 – Kim Carnes (Bette Davis Eyes); 1945 – John Lodge:bass:; 1947 – Carlos Santana:shred:; 1954 – Jay Jay French:shred:; 1957 – Donna Dixon; 1958 – BILLY MAYS!!; 1959 – Radney Foster♪ ♫; 1963 – Frank Whaley; 1964 – Chris Cornell:devil:; 1964 – Dean Winters ('Mayhem' in the Allstate commercials); 1966 – Stone Gossard:shred:; 1969 – Josh Holloway ('Sawyer" on Lost); 1971 – Sandra Oh; 1973 – Omar Epps ('Dr. Eric Foreman' on House); 1980 – Gisele Bündchen; 1988 – Julianne Hough

Deaths

1398 – Roger Mortimer; 1923 – Pancho Villa; 1937 – Guglielmo Marconi; 1973 – Bruce Lee; 1987 – Richard Egan; 1993 – Vince Foster (Deputy White House Counsel under Bill Clinton); 2005 – James Doohan ('Scotty' on Star Trek); 2007 – Tammy Faye [Bakker] Messner; 2013 – Helen Thomas (UP & UPI White House reporter for 57 years covering 11 U.S. Presidents)

July 21

356 BC – The Temple of Artemis, in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, is destroyed by arson.

365 – A tsunami devastates the city of Alexandria, Egypt. The tsunami was caused by the Crete earthquake, which was estimated to be magnitude 8.5 or higher. Five thousand people perished in Alexandria, and 45,000 more died outside the city.

1798 – Battle of the Pyramids takes place.

1861 – In the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major land battle in the American Civil War, the Confederate Army under Joseph E. Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard routed Union Army troops under Irvin McDowell.

1865 – In the market square of Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok shoots and kills Davis Tutt in what is regarded as the first 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.

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-Brillié in Ostend, Belgium.

1918 – U-156 shells Nauset Beach, in Orleans, Massachusetts.

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, father of Donald Campbell, becomes the first man to break the 150 mph (241 km/h) land barrier at Pendine Sands in Wales. He drove a Sunbeam at a two-way average speed 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.

World War II: Claus 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.

1959 – NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship, is launched as a showcase for Dwight D. Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" initiative.

1959 – Elijah Jerry "Pumpsie" Green becomes the first African-American to play for the Boston Red Sox, the last team to integrate.

1969 - The Beatles started work on the John Lennon song 'Come Together' at Abbey Road studios in London.

1970 – After 11 years of construction, the Aswan High Dam in Egypt is completed.

1972 – The Troubles: Bloody Friday: The Provisional IRA detonate 22 bombs in central Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom in the space of 80 minutes, killing nine and injuring 130.

1983 – The world's lowest temperature in an inhabited location is recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica at −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F).

1987 - Guns N’ Roses released their debut album on Geffen Records: Appetite For Destruction featured the singles 'Welcome to the Jungle', 'Sweet Child o' Mine', and 'Paradise City'. The album now has worldwide sales in excess of 28 million, 18 million of which are in the US, making it the best-selling debut album of all time there.

2005 – 21 July 2005 London Bombings takes place.

2011 – NASA's Space Shuttle program ends with the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-135 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

2012 – Erden Eruç (<---very interesting read, btw) completes the first solo human-powered circumnavigation of the world.

Births

1620 – Jean Picard (no, not Jean-Luc, this one's Jean-Félix; 1816 – Paul Reuter (founded Reuters news agency); 1851 – Sam Bass (old west outlaw); 1898 – Sara Carter (member of The Carter Family♪ ♫); 1899 – Hart Crane, Ernest Hemingway; 1920 – Isaac Stern:violin:; 1924 – Don Knotts; 1926 – Paul Burke, Norman Jewison, Bill Pertwee; 1935 – Kaye Stevens; 1938 – Les Aspin, 1938 – Janet Reno; 1943 – Edward Herrmann, Henry McCullough:shred:; 1946 – Ken Starr; 1948 – Cat Stevens, Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury); 1951 – Robin Williams; 1955 – Taco♪ ♫ (famous for 1984 cover of Puttin' On the Ritz), Howie Epstein:bass:; 1957 – Jon Lovitz; 1968 – Brandi Chastain; 1978 – Josh Hartnett; 1989 – Rory Culkin

Deaths

1796 – Robert Burns:haggis:; 1878 – Sam Bass; 1938 – Owen Wister; 1944 – Claus von Stauffenberg; 1967 – Basil Rathbone; 1982 – Dave Garroway; 1998 – Alan Shepard; 1998 – Robert Young:bandaid:; 2004 – Jerry Goldsmith♪ ♫; 2005 – Long John Baldry♪ ♫; 2015 – E. L. Doctorow

July 23

1632 – Three hundred colonists bound for New France depart from Dieppe, France.

1829 – In the United States, William Austin Burt patents the typographer, a precursor to the typewriter.

1840 – The Province of Canada is created by the Act of Union.

1903 – The Ford Motor Company sells its first car.

1914 – Austria-Hungary issues a series of demands in an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia demanding Serbia to allow the Austrians to determine who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Serbia accepts all but one of those demands and Austria declares war on July 28.

1926 – Fox Film buys the patents of the Movietone sound system for recording sound onto film.

1943 – The Rayleigh bath chair murder occurred in Rayleigh, Essex, England.

1962 – Telstar relays the first publicly transmitted, live trans-Atlantic television program, featuring Walter Cronkite.

1967 – 12th Street Riot: In Detroit, one of the worst riots in United States history begins on 12th Street in the predominantly African American inner city. It ultimately kills 43 people, injures 342 and burns about 1,400 buildings.

1968 – The only successful hijacking of an El Al aircraft takes place when a Boeing 707 carrying ten 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, to Lod, Israel.

1982 – The International Whaling Commission decides to end commercial whaling by 1985-86.

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, England, Prince Andrew, Duke of York marries Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey.

1995 – Comet Hale–Bopp is discovered; it becomes visible to the naked eye on Earth nearly a year later.

1997 – Digital Equipment Corporation files antitrust charges against chipmaker Intel.

2008 - Kid Rock was sentenced to a year on probation and fined $1,000 (£501) for his part in a fight in an Atlanta Waffle House in 2007. The 37-year-old, also received 80 hours community service and six hours of anger management counseling.

2011 - A yellow Ferrari previously owned by Eric Clapton sold for £66,500 at auction. The rare 2003 Ferrari 575 Maranello, which had only 10,000 miles on the clock, was snapped up by a private buyer at a sale at the Classic Car Sale at Silverstone, Northamptonshire, England.

2015 – NASA announces discovery of Kepler-452b by the Kepler space telescope.

Births

1884 – Emil Jannings; 1885 – Georges V. Matchabelli (Prince Matchabelli perfume); 1888 – Raymond Chandler; 1892 – Haile Selassie; 1901 – Hank Worden ('Mose' in The Searchers, appeared in 17 John Wayne movies); 1918 – Pee Wee Reese; 1921 – Calvert DeForest ('Larry Bud Melman' on Late Night with David Letterman & Late Show with David Letterman); 1933 – Bert Convy; 1936 – Don Drysdale; 1938 – Ronny Cox; 1938 – Charles Harrelson (American murderer, father of Woody Harrelson); 1940 – Don Imus; 1943 – Tony Joe White♪ ♫; 1947 – David Essex♪ ♫; 1961 – Woody Harrelson; 1962 – Eriq La Salle; 1964 – Nick Menza:drummer:; 1965 – Slash (real name Saul Hudson):shred:; 1967 – Philip Seymour Hoffman; 1968 – Stephanie Seymour; 1970 – Charisma Carpenter ('Cordelia' on Buffy the Vampire Slayer); 1971 – Alison Krauss♪ ♫:violin:; 1972 – Marlon Wayans; 1973 – Nomar Garciaparra; 1973 – Monica Lewinsky; 1989 – Daniel Radcliffe

Deaths

1875 – Isaac Singer (Singer sewing machines); 1885 – Ulysses S. Grant (18th POTUS); 1930 – Glenn Curtiss; 1948 – D. W. Griffith; 1955 – Cordell Hull; 1966 – Montgomery Clift; 1971 – Van Heflin; 1973 – Eddie Rickenbacker; 1980 – Keith Godchaux:keys:; 1982 – Vic Morrow; 2001 – Eudora Welty; 2011 – Amy Winehouse♪ ♫; 2012 – Sally Ride

July 24

Today, the U.S. state of Utah celebrates Pioneer Day, commemorating the arrival of Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley, in north-central Utah, in 1847.

Today is Parents' Day in the United States.

1411 – Battle of Harlaw, one of the bloodiest battles in Scotland, takes place.

1487 – Citizens of Leeuwarden, Netherlands strike against a ban on foreign beer.

1701 – Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founds the trading post at Fort Pontchartrain, which later becomes the city of Detroit, Michigan.

1847 – After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City, Utah.

1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Kernstown: Confederate General Jubal 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.

1911 – Hiram Bingham III re-discovers Machu Picchu, "the Lost City of the Incas".

1915 – The passenger ship S.S. Eastland capsizes while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. A total of 844 passengers and crew are killed in the largest loss of life disaster from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes.

1935 – The Dust Bowl heat wave reaches its peak, sending temperatures to 109 °F (43 °C) in Chicago and 104 °F (40 °C) in Milwaukee.

1937 – Alabama drops rape charges against the so-called "Scottsboro Boys".

1943 – World War II: Operation Gomorrah begins: British and Canadian aeroplanes bomb Hamburg by night, and American planes 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.

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".

1963 – The ship Bluenose II was launched in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. The schooner is a major Canadian symbol.

1967 - All four Beatles and their manager Brian Epstein signed a petition printed in The Times newspaper calling for the legalization of marijuana.

The Beatles meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose lecture on Transcendental Meditation (TM) they had gone to hear at the Hilton Hotel in London.

1978 - The Robert Stigwood film Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released, featuring The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton. The film received extremely negative reviews from most critics and barely broke even at the box office.

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 – A gunman bursts into the United States Capitol and opens fire killing two police officers. He is later ruled to be incompetent to stand trial.

Births

1468 – Catherine of Saxony; 1783 – Simón Bolívar; 1802 – Alexandre Dumas; 1895 – Robert Graves; 1897 – Amelia Earhart; 1899 – Chief Dan George (Little Big Man, The Outlaw Josey Wales); 1920 – Bella Abzug; 1934 – Sante Kimes (criminal); 1936 – Ruth Buzzi; 1940 – Dan Hedaya('Carla's husband, 'Nick Tortelli' on Cheers); 1942 – Chris Sarandon; 1946 – Gallagher:biggrinje; 1949 – Michael Richards; 1951 – Lynda Carter; 1952 – Gus Van Sant; 1957 – Pam Tillis♪ ♫; 1963 – Karl 'The Mailman' Malone; 1964 – Barry Bonds; 1965 – Kadeem Hardison; 1968 – Kristin Chenoweth; 1969 – Jennifer Lopez♪ ♫; 1975 – Eric Szmanda (CSI); 1979 – Rose Byrne; 1979 – Jerrod Niemann♪ ♫; 1981 – Summer Glau

Deaths

1862 – Martin Van Buren (8th POTUS); 1980 – Peter Sellers; 2012 – Chad Everett, Sherman Hemsley

July 25

315 – The Arch of Constantine is completed near the Colosseum in Rome to commemorate Constantine I's victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge.

1603 – James VI of Scotland is crowned 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.

1609 – The English ship Sea Venture, en route to Virginia, is deliberately driven ashore during a storm at Bermuda to prevent its sinking; the survivors go on to found a new colony there.

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.

1783 – American Revolutionary War: The war's last action, the Siege of Cuddalore, is ended by a preliminary peace agreement.

1797 – Horatio Nelson loses more than 300 men and his right arm during the failed conquest attempt of Tenerife (Spain).

1837 – The first commercial use of an electrical telegraph is successfully demonstrated by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone on July 25, 1837 between Euston and Camden Town in London.

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.

1893 – The Corinth Canal in the Gulf of Corinth, Greece is used for the first time.

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.

1909 – Louis Blériot makes the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine from (Calais to Dover, England, United Kingdom) 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.

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.

1956 – Forty-five 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.

1959 – SR.N1, a hovercraft, crosses the English Channel from Calais, France to Dover, England in just over two hours.

1965 – Bob Dylan goes electric as he plugs in at the Newport Folk Festival, signaling a major change in folk and rock music.

1969 - Neil Young appeared with Crosby, Stills and Nash for the first time, at The Fillmore East, in New York. Young was initially asked to help out with live material only, but ended up joining the group on and off for the next 30 years.

1976 – Viking program: Viking 1 takes the famous Face on Mars photo.

1978 – Louise Brown, the world's first "test tube baby" is born.

1980 - AC/DC released their sixth (Wikipedia says seventh) studio album Back In Black, the first AC/DC album recorded without former lead singer Bon Scott who died on 19 February 1980 at the age of 33. The album has sold an estimated 49 million copies worldwide to date, making it the second highest-selling album of all time, and the best-selling hard rock or heavy metal album.

2000 – Concorde Air France Flight 4590 crashes at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, killing 113 passengers.

2010 – WikiLeaks publishes classified documents about the War in Afghanistan, one of the largest leaks in U.S. military history.

Births

1750 – Henry Knox; 1844 – Thomas Eakins:artist:; 1875 – Jim Corbett; 1894 – Walter Brennan; 1908 – Jack Gilford; 1914 – Woody Strode; 1915 – Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.; 1923 – Estelle Getty; 1941 – Manny Charlton:shred:; 1941 – Nate Thurmond; 1948 – Steve Goodman:shred:; 1951 – Verdine White:bass:; 1954 – Walter Payton; 1965 – Illeana Douglas; 1967 – Matt LeBlanc; 1976 – Tera Patrick (porn actress); 1982 – Brad Renfro; 1985 – Nelson Piquet Jr.:driving:

Deaths

1834 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge; 1934 – François Coty (Coty beauty products); 1982 – Hal Foster (created comic strip Prince Valiant); 1984 – Big Mama Thornton♪ ♫; 1986 – Vincente Minnelli; 1989 – Steve Rubell (co-owner Studio 54); 1995 – Charlie Rich♪ ♫; 1997 – Ben Hogan; 2003 – John Schlesinger (director Midnight Cowboy); 2008 – Randy Pausch

July 26

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.

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.

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.

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).

1943 - Basil and Eva Jagger have a son, whom they name Michael, he will go by the name 'Mick'.

1944 – World War II: The Soviet Army enters Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, capturing it from the Nazis. Only 300 Jews survive out of 160,000 living in Lviv prior to occupation.

1945 – The Labour Party wins the United Kingdom general election of July 5 by a landslide, removing Winston Churchill from power.

HMS Vestal is the last British Royal Navy ship to be sunk in the Second World War.

The United States Navy cruiser USS Indianapolis arrives at Tinian with parts of the warhead for the Hiroshima atomic bomb (Little Boy).

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, United States Air Force, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the United States National Security Council.

1953 – Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks, thus beginning the Cuban Revolution. The movement took the name of the date: 26th of July Movement.

1971 – Apollo program: Launch of Apollo 15 on the first Apollo "J-Mission", and first use of a Lunar Roving Vehicle.

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.

2005 – Space Shuttle program: STS-114 Mission: Launch of Discovery, NASA's first scheduled flight mission after the Columbia Disaster in 2003.

2006 - The guitar on which Sir Paul McCartney learned his first chords sold for £330,000 at an auction at London's Abbey Road Studios. The Rex acoustic guitar helped McCartney persuade John Lennon to let him join his band, The Quarrymen, in 1957.

The final edition of Top Of The Pops was recorded at BBC Television Centre in London. Just under 200 members of the public were in the audience for the show which was co-hosted by veteran disc jockey Sir Jimmy Savile, its very first presenter. Classic performances from the Spice Girls, Wham, Madonna, Beyonce Knowles and Robbie Williams featured in the show alongside The Rolling Stones who were the very first band to appear on Top of the Pops on New Year's Day in 1964.

Births

1739 – George Clinton (no, not that one, this one was the 4th VPOTUS); 1856 – George Bernard Shaw; 1875 – Carl Jung; 1894 – Aldous Huxley; 1895 – Gracie Allen; 1903 – Estes Kefauver; 1904 – Edwin Albert Link (invented the flight simulator); 1909 – Vivian Vance ('Ethyl Mertz' on I love Lucy); 1921 – Jean Shepherd (narrated & wrote script for A Christmas Story); 1922 – Blake Edwards; 1922 – Jason Robards; 1923 – Jan Berenstain (create Berenstain Bears); 1923 – Biff Elliot (first actor to portray 'Mike Hammer', in I, The Jury); 1926 – James Best ('Roscoe P. Coltrane'); 1928 – Stanley Kubrick; 1929 – Joe Jackson (Jackson Family patriarch, not the New Wave dweeb); 1940 – Dobie Gray♪ ♫; 1941 – Darlene Love♪ ♫; 1943 – Peter Hyams; 1943 – Mick Jagger♪ ♫; 1945 – Helen Mirren; 1949 – Roger Taylor:drummer:; 1956 – Dorothy Hamill; 1957 – Nana Visitor; 1959 – Kevin Spacey; 1961 – Gary Cherone♪ ♫; 1964 – Sandra Bullock; 1965 – Jeremy Piven; 1967 – Jason Statham; 1973 – Kate Beckinsale; 1973 – Chris Pirillo (computer nerd); 1993 – Taylor Momsen:heartpump

Deaths

1533 – Atahualpa; 1863 – Sam Houston; 1925 – William Jennings Bryan; 1932 – Fred Duesenberg; 1952 – Eva Perón; 1971 – Diane Arbus; 1984 – Ed Gein; 1992 – Mary Wells♪ ♫; 1995 – George W. Romney (Mitt's father); 2004 – William A. Mitchell (created Pop Rocks and Cool Whip); 2013 – JJ Cale♪ ♫:shred:, George P. Mitchell (hydraulic fracturing pioneer); 2015 – Vic Firth:drummer:, Ann Rule

July 27

There are 150 days til Christmas.

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.

1694 – A Royal charter is granted to the Bank of England.

1866 – The first permanent transatlantic telegraph cable is successfully completed, stretching from Valentia Island, Ireland, to Heart's Content, Newfoundland.

1890 – Vincent van Gogh shoots himself and dies two days later.

1900 – Kaiser Wilhelm II makes a speech comparing Germans to Huns; for years afterwards, "Hun" would be a disparaging name for Germans.

1919 – The Chicago Race Riot erupts after a racial incident occurred on a South Side beach, leading to 38 fatalities and 537 injuries over a five-day period.

1940 – The animated short A Wild Hare is released, introducing the character of Bugs Bunny.

1949 – Initial flight of the de Havilland Comet (on the de Havilland Aircraft Company's founder's birthday), the first big ol' jet airliner, giving Steve Miller something to sing about 28 years later.

1953 – Fighting in the Korean War ends when the United States, 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.

1958 - Fans of rock & roll music were warned that tuning into music on the car radio could cost you more money. Researchers from the Esso gas company said the rhythm of rock & roll could cause the driver to be foot heavy on the pedal, making them waste fuel.

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 - Tina Turner filed for divorce from her husband Ike, ending their violent 16-year marriage and successful musical partnership.

1981 – Adam Walsh, 6-year-old son of John Walsh, is kidnapped in Hollywood, Florida and is found murdered two weeks later.

1986 - Queen became the first western act since Louis Armstrong in 1964 to perform in Easton Europe when they played at Budapest's Nepstadion, Hungary, the gig was filmed and released as 'Queen Magic in Budapest'.

1987 – RMS Titanic Inc. begins the first expedited salvage of the wreckage of the RMS Titanic.

1995 – The Korean War Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C..

1996 – In Atlanta, United States, a pipe bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Summer Olympics.

2005 – After an incident during STS-114, NASA grounds the Space Shuttle, pending an investigation of the continuing problem with the shedding of foam insulation from the external fuel tank.

2007 – News helicopters from Phoenix, Arizona television stations KNXV and KTVK collide over Steele Indian School Park in central Phoenix while covering a police chase.

Births

1667 – Johann Bernoulli (Bernoulli's Principle); 1824 – Alexandre Dumas, fils; 1882 – Geoffrey de Havilland (founded the de Havilland Aircraft Company); 1905 – Leo Durocher; 1916 – Keenan Wynn; 1922 – Norman Lear; 1927 – John Seigenthaler; 1928 – Joseph Kittinger; 1929 – Jack Higgins; 1931 – Jerry Van Dyke; 1937 – Don Galloway (Ironside); 1938 – Gary Gygax (co-creator Dungeons & Dragons); 1942 – John Pleshette (Knot's Landing); 1944 – Bobbie Gentry♪ ♫; 1948 – Peggy Fleming; 1948 – Betty Thomas (Hill Street Blues); 1949 – Maury Chaykin; 1952 – Roxanne Hart; 1953 – Yahoo Serious (Young Einstein); 1957 – Bill Engvall; 1964 – Rex Brown:bass:(Pantera); 1969 – Triple H; 1972 – Maya Rudolph; 1975 – Alex Rodriguez; 1977 – Jonathan Rhys Meyers; 1993 – Jordan Spieth

Deaths

1946 – Gertrude Stein; 1958 – Claire Lee Chennault; 1980 – Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (former Shah of Iran); 1981 – William Wyler; 1984 – James Mason; 1988 – Frank Zamboni (yeah, that one); 1998 – Binnie Barnes; 2000 – Gordon Solie (sportscaster); 2001 – Leon Wilkeson:bass:(Lynyrd Skynyrd); 2003 – Bob Hope; 2010 – Maury Chaykin; 2012 – R. G. Armstrong

July 28

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.

1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just are executed by guillotine in Paris, France.

1854 – USS Constellation (1854), the last all-sail warship built by the United States Navy, is commissioned.

1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Ezra Church: Confederate troops make a third unsuccessful attempt to drive Union forces from Atlanta, Georgia.

1866 – At the age of 18, Vinnie Ream became the youngest artist and first woman to receive a commission from the United States government for a statue—that of Abraham Lincoln in the US Capitol rotunda.

1915 – The United States begins a 20-year occupation of Haiti.

1943 – World War II: Operation Gomorrah: The Royal Air Force bombs Hamburg, Germany 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.

1956 - Gene Vincent made his first appearance on national TV in the US on The Perry Como Show.

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.

1969 - Police in Moscow reported that thousands of public phone booths had been vandalized after thieves were stealing parts of the phones to convert their acoustic guitars to electric. A feature in a Russian youth magazine had shown details on how to do this.

1973 – Summer Jam at Watkins Glen: Nearly 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 people, and injuring 164,851.

1996 – The remains of a prehistoric man are discovered near Kennewick, Washington. Such remains will be known as the Kennewick Man.

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.

2011 - Marvin Lee Aday, the 63-year-old singer who goes by the name of Meat Loaf, passed out onstage at Pittsburgh's Trib Amphitheater during an apparent asthma attack. After about ten minutes he regained his composure and finished the show.

Births

1866 – Beatrix Potter; 1901 – Rudy Vallée♪ ♫; 1907 – Earl Tupper (Tupperware); 1915 – Dick Sprang (Batman illustrator, redesigned the Batmobile in 1950, created original design of The Riddler); 1929 – Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis; 1930 – Junior Kimbrough♪ ♫; 1943 – Mike Bloomfield:shred:, Bill Bradley, Richard Wright:keys:; 1945 – Jim Davis (creator Garfield); 1946 – Jonathan Edwards♪ ♫ (Sunshine); 1947 – Sally Struthers; 1948 – Gerald Casale:bass:(Devo); 1948 – Georgia Engel ('Georgette Baxter' on Mary Tyler Moore Show); 1949 – Simon Kirke:drummer:, Steve Peregrin Took:shred:; 1954 – Hugo Chávez; 1954 – Steve Morse:shred: (founder Dixie Dregs, Deep Purple); 1964 – Lori Loughlin (Full House); 1990 – Soulja Boy

Deaths

1540 – Thomas Cromwell; 1655 – Cyrano de Bergerac; 1741 – Antonio Vivaldi:violin:♪ ♫; 1750 – Johann Sebastian Bach:keys:♪ ♫; 1794 – Maximilien Robespierre:behead:, Louis Antoine de Saint-Just:behead:; 1934 – Marie Dressler; 1969 – Frank Loesser♪ ♫; 2009 – Reverend Ike; 2013 – Eileen Brennan (Private Benjamin)