This Day in History

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1969 – The United States $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills are officially withdrawn from circulation.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

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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); 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)

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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; 1958 – Michael Flatley; 1963 – Phoebe Cates; 1964 – Melissa Monet; 1967 – Will Ferrell; 1968 – Barry Sanders; 1968 – Larry Sanger (co-founded Wikipedia); 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; 1999 – Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Jr.; 2010 – James Gammon; 2012 – Bob Babbitt; 2012 – Jon Lord, Kitty Wells; 2013 – T-Model Ford; 2014 – Johnny Winter

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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; 1951 – Lucie Arnaz; 1952 – David Hasselhoff, Nicolette Larson; 1954 – Angela Merkel; 1957 – Bruce Crump; 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; 1996 – Chas Chandler; 2001 – Katharine Graham (WaPo publisher); 2005 – Geraldine Fitzgerald; 2006 – Mickey Spillane; 2009 – Walter Cronkite; 2014 – Elaine Stritch

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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; 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, 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; 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

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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, Brian May; 1948 – Keith Godchaux; 1952 – Allen Collins; 1961 – Lisa Lampanelli; 1962 – Anthony Edwards; 1968 – Jim Norton; 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

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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; 1947 – Carlos Santana; 1954 – Jay Jay French; 1957 – Donna Dixon; 1958 – BILLY MAYS!!; 1959 – Radney Foster♪ ♫; 1963 – Frank Whaley; 1964 – Chris Cornell; 1964 – Dean Winters ('Mayhem' in the Allstate commercials); 1966 – Stone Gossard; 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)

[Gravdigr]

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; 1924 – Don Knotts; 1926 – Paul Burke, Norman Jewison, Bill Pertwee; 1935 – Kaye Stevens; 1938 – Les Aspin, 1938 – Janet Reno; 1943 – Edward Herrmann, Henry McCullough; 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; 1957 – Jon Lovitz; 1968 – Brandi Chastain; 1978 – Josh Hartnett; 1989 – Rory Culkin

Deaths

1796 – Robert Burns; 1878 – Sam Bass; 1938 – Owen Wister; 1944 – Claus von Stauffenberg; 1967 – Basil Rathbone; 1982 – Dave Garroway; 1998 – Alan Shepard; 1998 – Robert Young; 2004 – Jerry Goldsmith♪ ♫; 2005 – Long John Baldry♪ ♫; 2015 – E. L. Doctorow

[Gravdigr]

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; 1965 – Slash (real name Saul Hudson); 1967 – Philip Seymour Hoffman; 1968 – Stephanie Seymour; 1970 – Charisma Carpenter ('Cordelia' on Buffy the Vampire Slayer); 1971 – Alison Krauss♪ ♫; 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; 1982 – Vic Morrow; 2001 – Eudora Welty; 2011 – Amy Winehouse♪ ♫; 2012 – Sally Ride

[Gravdigr]

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; 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

[Gravdigr]

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; 1875 – Jim Corbett; 1894 – Walter Brennan; 1908 – Jack Gilford; 1914 – Woody Strode; 1915 – Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.; 1923 – Estelle Getty; 1941 – Manny Charlton; 1941 – Nate Thurmond; 1948 – Steve Goodman; 1951 – Verdine White; 1954 – Walter Payton; 1965 – Illeana Douglas; 1967 – Matt LeBlanc; 1976 – Tera Patrick (porn actress); 1982 – Brad Renfro; 1985 – Nelson Piquet Jr.

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

[Gravdigr]

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; 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

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♪ ♫, George P. Mitchell (hydraulic fracturing pioneer); 2015 – Vic Firth, Ann Rule

[Gravdigr]

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, Bill Bradley, Richard Wright; 1945 – Jim Davis (creator Garfield); 1946 – Jonathan Edwards♪ ♫ (Sunshine); 1947 – Sally Struthers; 1948 – Gerald Casale(Devo); 1948 – Georgia Engel ('Georgette Baxter' on Mary Tyler Moore Show); 1949 – Simon Kirke, Steve Peregrin Took; 1954 – Hugo Chávez; 1954 – Steve Morse (founder Dixie Dregs, Deep Purple); 1964 – Lori Loughlin (Full House); 1990 – Soulja Boy

Deaths

1540 – Thomas Cromwell; 1655 – Cyrano de Bergerac; 1741 – Antonio Vivaldi♪ ♫; 1750 – Johann Sebastian Bach♪ ♫; 1794 – Maximilien Robespierre, Louis Antoine de Saint-Just; 1934 – Marie Dressler; 1969 – Frank Loesser♪ ♫; 2009 – Reverend Ike; 2013 – Eileen Brennan (Private Benjamin)

[glatt]

I never heard of that summer jam at Watkins Glen. It must have been a good time. Except I hate big crowds and 600,000 is a lot of people. So maybe I would have had a bad time. How have I never heard about this concert before?

According to some web site:

At Watkins Glen a feeling of monotony and tedium constantly challenged the viewers' interest in the music and the proceed*ings onstage. Long, winding solos were frequent. The heat, the lack of comfort, and the crowded conditions dulled otherwise stirring moments. Many of the 600,000 could barely see the stage, let alone the musicians. And most important, festivalgoers had only one day to soak up the rock-festival aura. Many in attendance were often too busy doing and seeing other things to bother to listen seriously to the music for extended periods of time.

[Gravdigr]

August 1

Today is Lammas Day in England and Scotland, celebrating the wheat harvest.

In the Northern Hemisphere, today is Lughnasadh, marking the beginning of the harvest season.

30 BC – Octavian (later known as Augustus) enters Alexandria, Egypt, bringing it under the control of the Roman Republic.

1620 – The Speedwell leaves Delfshaven to bring pilgrims to America by way of England.

1715 – The Riot Act comes into force in England.

1800 – The Acts of Union 1800 are passed which merge the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1831 – A new London Bridge opens.

1911 – Harriet Quimby takes her pilot's test and becomes the first U.S. woman to earn an Aero Club of America aviator's certificate.

1964, Billboard Magazine reported that the harmonica was making a comeback in a big way thanks to its use by Stevie Wonder, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Bob Dylan.

1966 – Charles Whitman kills 16 people at the University of Texas at Austin before being killed by the police.

1971, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour started on prime time American TV. By this time, Sonny and Cher had stopped producing hit singles so the duo decided to sing and tell jokes in nightclubs across the country. CBS head of programming Fred Silverman saw them one evening and offered them their own show.

1981 – MTV begins broadcasting in the United States and airs its first video, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles.

1993 – The Great Mississippi and Missouri Rivers Flood of 1993 comes to a peak.

2004 – A supermarket fire kills 396 people and injures 500 others in Asunción, Paraguay.

2007 – The I-35W Mississippi River bridge, spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, collapses during the evening rush hour.

Births

10 BC – Claudius; 1659 – Sebastiano Ricci; 1770 – William Clark (Lewis & Clark); 1779 – Francis Scott Key; 1809 – William B. Travis (Remember the Alamo?); 1819 – Herman Melville; 1843 – Robert Todd Lincoln; 1912 – Henry Jones; 1930 – Lawrence Eagleburger; 1931 – Ramblin' Jack Elliott♪ ♫; 1933 – Dom DeLuise; 1936 – Yves Saint Laurent; 1942 – Jerry Garcia♪ ♫; 1944 – Andrew G. Vajna; 1946 – Boz Burrell♪ ♫; 1951 – Tim Bachman♪ ♫(BTO); 1951 – Tommy Bolin♪ ♫(Deep Purple, James Gang); 1953 – Robert Cray♪ ♫; 1957 – Taylor Negron; 1959 – Joe Elliott♪ ♫(Def Leppard); 1960 – Chuck D♪ ♫(Public Enemy), Professor Griff♪ ♫(Public Enemy); 1961 – Brad Faxon; 1963 – Coolio♪ ♫; 1964 – Adam Duritz♪ ♫(Counting Crows); 1978 – Dhani Harrison♪ ♫(George Harrison's son); 1979 – Jason Momoa (GoT)

Deaths

30 BC – Mark Antony; 1903 – Calamity Jane; 1966 – Charles Whitman; 1970 – Frances Farmer; 1977 – Francis Gary Powers; 1980 – Strother Martin; 1981 – Paddy Chayefsky; 2006 – Bob Thaves (creator Frank & Ernest); 2009 – Corazon Aquino; 2015 – Cilla Black♪ ♫