This Day in History

[GordMay]

July 6

1976 ~ First Women inducted into U.S. Naval Academy
In Annapolis, Maryland, the United States Naval Academy admits women for the first time in its history, with the induction of 81 female midshipmen. In May 1980, Elizabeth Anne Rowe became the first woman member of the class to graduate. Four years later, Kristine Holderied became the first female midshipman to graduate at the top of her class. The U.S. Naval Academy opened in Annapolis in October 1845, with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors.

1946 - George W. (Walker) Bush, & Sylvester Stallone Born

1942 ~ Japanese forces landed on Guadalcanal Island and began constructing an airfield.

1919 ~ R-34 Crosses Atlantic
The British dirigible R-34 landed (or was hauled in, as they say) at Roosevelt Field, Long Island, NY. It was the first airship to cross the Atlantic. The 600-foot-long airship, piloted by Royal Air Force Cmdr. G.H. Scott with a crew of 30, reached a top speed of 62 mph during the 108-hour trip from Scotland.

1747 - John Paul Jones Born
American naval officer of the ship Bonhomme Richard, in battle against British frigate Serapis, coined the phrase, “I have not yet begun to fight!” Jones died July 18, 1792

1699 ~ Kidd Captured
Pirate Captain William Kidd was captured in Boston, MA and deported back to England.
More on Kidd & other pirates: http://www.piratesinfo.com/biography/biography.php

[GordMay]

July 7

1941 ~ U.S. Occupies Iceland

1929 ~ Lateran Treaty
The Vatican City State, with the pope as its sovereign, came into being through the Lateran Treaty.

1920 ~ Radio Compass
In a test of the radio compass as an aid to navigation, an F5L (US Navy Aircraft) left Hampton Roads and flew directly to the USS ‘Ohio’, 94 miles at sea (in a position unknown to the pilot). Without landing, the plane made the return trip to Hampton Roads, this time navigating by signals from Norfolk.
The radio compass is basically a radio receiver fitted with a loop aerial. The loop aerial itself is very directional and if rotated through 360 degrees a signal will disappear quite sharply when the loop is square on to the station that is being received and at a maximum when the loop is in line with the bearing of that station. The null and peak will obviously occur at two points in the rotation and providing precautions are taken to ensure that the correct point is chosen, the direction of the station can be determined using the null, that being the most precise point to detect. If the bearing of two or more stations can be measured, the stations identified and if their map locations are known ones position can be determined.

1854 ~ Georg Ohm (German physicist) Dies

1853 ~ Perry Arrives at Uraga, Japan
Perry was sent on a mission by President Millard Fillmore to establish trade with Japan – a country that had been isolated from the outside world since the 17th century.
On July 7 of that same year, Perry leads a squadron of four ships into Tokyo Bay and presented representatives of the Japanese Emperor with the text of a proposed commercial and friendship treaty. The Japanese rejected Perry’s demands and Perry withdrew.
Perry returned to Japan in February, 1854. This time he appears with seven ships - four sailing ships, three steamers – and one thousand, six hundred men. After a standoff, Perry landed for peace and trade talks on March 8, 1854, and began to negotiate with the Japanese to establish a trade agreement.
On March 31, 1854, Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa on behalf of the United States, which established "permanent" friendship between the two countries. The treaty guaranteed that the Japanese would save shipwrecked Americans and provide fuel for American ships, but also opened the opportunity for trade between Japan and the United States. The signing of this treaty signaled the end of Japanese isolation.
This was the period in American history often described by the term "Manifest Destiny." The United States was aggressively (including the use of military force when considered necessary) engaged in expanding her borders, influence and power. California had been annexed in 1848 and as Perry sailed for Japan, the purchase of large portions of what is now New Mexico and Arizona was being concluded with Mexico (the Gadsden Purchase) and exploration and surveys necessary for a continental railroad were underway.

[GordMay]

July 8

1497 ~ Da Gama Departs Lisbon en route India
Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama left Lisbon for a voyage on which he discovered the Cape route to India.
More at: http://campus.northpark.edu/history/...pe/DaGama.html

1776 ~ Liberty Bell Rings
In Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell rings out from the tower of the Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall), summoning citizens to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, by Colonel John Nixon. On July 4, the historic document was adopted by delegates to the Continental Congress meeting in the State House. However, the Liberty Bell, which bore the apt biblical quotation, "Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land unto All the Inhabitants Thereof," was not rung until the Declaration of Independence returned from the printer on July 8.

1838 ~ Count Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin Born (inventor of rigid dirigibles)

1884 ~ The National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) was founded in London.

1950 ~ MacArthur Named UN Commander in Korea

1959 ~ Dale Buisand & Chester Ovnand 1st Americans Killed in Vietnam War

1987 ~ North Testifies Under Grant of Immunity Before Congress
Lt. Col. Oliver North testifies ( July 7-10 and July 13-14) in Iran-Contra (Arms for Hostages) scandal.
The ‘Report’: http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/

1994 ~ North Korea's "Great Leader" Dies
Kim Il Sung, the communist dictator of North Korea since 1948, dies of a heart attack at the age of 82.

[GordMay]

July 9

1749 ~ Halifax, Nova Scotia Founded
Edward Cornwallis founds new settlement of Halifax, as naval settlement to counter Louisbourg.

1816 ~ Argentina formally declared independence from Spain.

1900 ~ Australia United
The British Parliament proclaimed that as of Jan. 1, 1901, the six Australian colonies would be united as the “Commonwealth of Australia”.

1910 ~ Brookins Flies a Mile
The first airplane to fly a mile in the air did so this day with W.R. Brookins of Atlantic City, NJ at the controls.

1916 - Edward Heath Born (Prime Minister of Great Britain 1970-1974)

1943 - American and British forces made an amphibious landing on Sicily.

1947 - O.J. (Orenthal James) Simpson Born
Pro Football Hall of Famer, Defendant in the ’trial of the century’: acquitted of 1994 murder of ex-wife, Nicole, Ron Goldman [1995]; found responsible for their deaths in a civil suit [1997].

1995 ~ French Commandos Board Greenpeace Protest Ship “Rainbow Warrior II”

2004 ~ The highest U.N. court condemned Israel's occupation policies and declared that Israel must tear down the 425-mile-long security barrier in the West Bank.

[Alan Wheeler]

Seeing it was today in history,
10th July (NZ time) 1985
NZ's first (and so far only) act of Terrorism took place in Auckland. The Greenpeace Flagship, Rainbow Warrior was birthed in Auckland making ready to lead a fleet of vessels to Murorao Atoll to protest against French Nuclear testing.
Just before Midnight, two explosions ripped through the ships hull, sinking the 40m vessel. Two limpet mines had been placed on the ships hull by frogmen. After the first explosion, the Photographer Fernando Pereira went back to his cabin to get his camera. The second explosion took place and Fernando was drowned.
11 French agents had entered NZ as part of the Rainbow Warrior sinking. Two french secret service agents(DSGE), Alain Mafart and Dominigue Prieur were caught and arrested.
On the 4th Nov, on Trila in a NN court, the two pleaded guilty of manslaugter and were sentanced to 10years imprisonment. However, the French Government pressured NZ by threatening to impose sanctions against NZ produce and had the two agents returned. They served 2 years of their sentance living on the french atoll of Hao and then returned to France and were awarded medals and regarded as Heroes.

[GordMay]

July 10

1991 ~ Yeltsin Takes Office
After 1,000 years, the Russian people were finally permitted to elect a president. Boris Yeltsin took the oath of office this day, after he had resoundingly defeated the Communist Party candidate.

1985 ~ The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior
In Auckland harbor in New Zealand, Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior sinks after French agents, in diving gear, plant a bomb on the hull of the vessel. One person, Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira, was killed.
See Wheels’ earlier post.
And: http://www.greenpeace.org.au/rainbow_warrior/

1973 ~ Bahamas Independence (National Day) Takes Effect
The Commonwealth of the Bahamas gain independence after 300 yrs of British rule.
More: http://www.georgetown.edu/pdba/Const...mas/bah73.html

1962 ~ “Telstar” Launched
Telstar, the first geosynchronous earth satellite, would usher in a new age of communication via telephone and TV, with voice and picture transmission from Europe to America and back. Signals were picked up by a 38-ton antenna in Andover, Maine.

1940 ~ Battle of Britain began as Nazi Forces Attacked by Air

1925 ~ Scopes “Monkey Trial” Begins
John Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, is accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law. The law, which had been passed in March, made it a misdemeanor punishable by fine to "teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." With local businessman George Rappalyea, Scopes had conspired to get charged with this violation, and after his arrest the pair enlisted the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to organize a defense. Hearing of this coordinated attack on Christian fundamentalism, William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate and a fundamentalist hero, volunteered to assist the prosecution. Soon after, the great attorney Clarence Darrow agreed to join the ACLU in the defense, and the stage was set for one of the most famous trials in U.S. history.
After eight minutes of deliberation, the jury returned with a guilty verdict, and Raulston ordered Scopes to pay a fine of $100, the minimum the law allowed.
In 1927, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the Monkey Trial verdict on a technicality but left the constitutional issues unresolved until 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a similar Arkansas law on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment.

1918 ~ Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic Established

1913 ~ Death Valley Hits 134 Degrees
The highest temperature ever recorded in the continental United States was 134 degrees which melted thermometers this day in Death Valley, California.

1856 ~ Nikola Tesla (engineer, inventor, physicist) Born
Arriving in New York City with four cents in his pocket, Tesla found employment with Thomas Edison in New Jersey. Differences in style between the two men soon lead to their separation. In 1885, George Westinghouse, founder of the Westinghouse Electric Company, bought patent rights to Tesla's system of alternating-current. The advantages of alternating-current over Edison's system of direct-current became apparent when Westinghouse successfully used Tesla's system to light the World Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893.
Tesla established a laboratory in New York City in 1887. His experiments ranged from an exploration of electrical resonance to studies of various lighting systems. To counter fears of alternating-current, Tesla gave exhibitions in his laboratory in which he lighted lamps without wires by allowing electricity to flow through his body.
When Tesla became a United States citizen in 1891, he was at the peak of his creative powers. He developed in rapid succession the induction motor, new types of generators and transformers, a system of alternating-current power transmission, fluorescent lights, and a new type of steam turbine. He also became intrigued with wireless transmission of power.
In 1900, Tesla began construction on Long Island of a wireless broadcasting tower. The project was funded with $150,000 capital from financier J. Pierpont Morgan. The project was abandoned when Morgan withdrew his financial support. Tesla's work shifted to turbines and other projects, but his ideas remained on the drawing board due to a lack of funds. Tesla's notebooks are still examined by engineers in search of unexploited ideas.
Tesla allowed himself few close friends, although one was humorist and author, Mark Twain. However, when he died in New York City on January 7, 1943, hundreds of admirers attended his funeral services, mourning the loss of a great genius. At the time of his death Tesla held over 700 patents.
Read More: http://www.nickf.com/tesla.htm

[GordMay]

July 11

1533 ~ Pope Clement VII Excommunicates England's King Henry VIII

1776 ~ Captain James Cook Begins Third (last) Voyage.
On his last voyage, Cook once again commanded the HMS Resolution, while Captain Charles Clerke commanded the HMS Discovery. Ostensibly the voyage was planned to return Omai to Tahiti; this is what the general public believed, as he had become a favourite curiosity in London. After returning Omai, Cook travelled north and in 1778 became the first European to visit the Hawaiian Islands, which he named the "Sandwich Islands" after the 4th Earl of Sandwich, the then First Lord of the Admiralty. From there, he travelled east to explore the west coast of North America, eventually landing at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island, although he unknowingly sailed past the Strait of Juan de Fuca. He explored and mapped the coast from California all the way to the Bering Strait, discovering what came to be known as Cook Inlet in Alaska on the way.
The Bering Strait proved to be impassable, although he made several attempts to sail through it. Cook became increasingly frustrated on this voyage, and probably began to suffer from a stomach ailment; it is speculated that this led to irrational behaviour towards his crew, such as forcing them to eat walrus meat, which they found inedible.
Cook returned to Hawaii in 1779. On February 14 at Kealakekua Bay, some Hawaiians stole one of Cook's small boats; normally, as thefts were quite common in Tahiti and the other islands, he would have taken hostages until whatever was stolen was returned, but his stomach ailment and increasingly irrational behaviour lead to an altercation with a large crowd of Hawaiians gathered on the beach. In the ensuing skirmish, shots were fired at the Hawaiians and Cook was clubbed and stabbed to death.

1789 ~ US Marine Corps Created By an Act of Congress

1804 ~ Burr Slays Hamilton in Duel
In a duel held in Weehawken, New Jersey, Vice President Aaron Burr fatally shoots his long-time political antagonist Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, a leading Federalist and the chief architect of America's political economy, died the following day.

1812 ~ US invades Canada

1882 ~ British Fleet Bombs Alexandria

1921~ Mongolia Gains Independence from China (National Day)

1979 ~ Skylab Crashes to Earth
Parts of Skylab, America's first space station, come crashing down on Australia and into the Indian Ocean five years after the last manned Skylab mission ended. No one was injured. Launched in 1973, Skylab was the world's first successful space station. The first manned Skylab mission came two years after the Soviet Union launched Salynut 1, the world's first space station, into orbit around the earth.

1995 ~ U.S. Establishes Diplomatic Relations with Vietnam

[Alan Wheeler]

And to add to the Skylab story,
11th July 1979
A US official upset Australia when he stated that having Skylab crash their was not a problem, because there was nothing there but a bunch of Kangaroo's. (actual wording may have changed slightly, as 79 has become slightly hazy in my mind now)

[GordMay]

July 12

1997 ~ Che Returns to Cuba
The recently discovered remains of the Latin American revolutionary activist Che Guevara were returned to Cuba from Bolivia, where he was killed in 1967.

1957 ~ Aga Khan IV Proclaimed
The Nizari Ismaili sect of the Shiite Muslims welcomes a new spiritual leader, when Prince Karim Al-Hussain, of Pakistan, is proclaimed Aga Khan IV. Prince Karim's grandfather, Aga Khan III, died the previous day after a 72-year reign. Prince Karim left Harvard University in Cambridge, MA to become the leader of 20 million Ismaili Moslems. He was 20 years old at the time of his calling.

1920 ~ US President Wilson Opens the Panama Canal
More: http://www.eclipse.co.uk/~sl5763/panama.htm

1878 ~ Turkey Cedes Cyprus to Great Britain

1794 ~ British admiral Horatio Nelson lost his right eye at the siege of Calvi, in Corsica
On 12th of July, whilst directing fire, Nelson was wounded. A French cannon ball hit some rocks, sand and stones throwing some of the material into his face. His right eye was irreprable damaged by flying shards although he did not entirely lose the sight in it. He could distinguish light from dark but could not make out objects.
Nelson received treatment for the wound and carried on with the attack on Calvi. The City eventually surrendered on the 10th August 1794 mainly due to the lack of ammunition the attack having lasted for over six weeks.
More: http://www.twogreens.com/wakeup/battles/OLDcalvi.htm
And: http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/o..._of_nelson.asp

100 BC ~ Roman Emperor Julius C‘sar (Ceasar) Born

[GordMay]

July 13

1712 ~ Richard Cromwell, Lord Protector of England Dies.

1793 ~ Charlotte Corday assassinates Marat.
Jean Paul Marat, one of the most outspoken leaders of the French Revolution, is stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday, a Royalist sympathizer.

1837 ~ Queen Victoria became the first sovereign to move into Buckingham Palace, London.

1945 ~ 1st Atom Bomb Explodes in New Mexico

1960 ~ Kenedy Nominated.
U.S. Democratic convention nominates John F. Kennedy as presidential candidate.

[GordMay]

July 14

1099 ~ Jerusalem Captured in First Crusade
Christian knights from Europe capture Jerusalem after seven weeks of siege, and begin massacring the city's Muslim and Jewish population.
The First Crusade was launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II to regain control of the sacred city of Jerusalem and the Christian Holy Land from Muslims. What started as a minor call for aid (In March of 1095, Alexius I, of Constantinople Byzantium, sent envoys to the Council of Piacenza to ask Urban for aid against the Turks.) quickly turned into a wholesale migration and conquest of territory outside of Europe. Both knights and peasants from many different nations of western Europe, with little central leadership, travelled over land and by sea, murdering & pillaging along the way, towards Jerusalem and captured the city in July 1099, establishing the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other Crusader states. Although these gains lasted for fewer than two hundred years, the Crusade was a major turning point in the expansion of Western power, and was the only crusade – in contrast to the many that followed – to achieve its stated goal.

1789 ~ Bastille Stormed - French Revolution Begins
[size=1]Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops storm and dismantle the Bastille, a
royal fortress that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchs.
This dramatic action signaled the beginning of the French Revolution, a decade
of political turmoil and terror in which King Louis XVI was overthrown and tens
of thousands of people, including the king and his wife Marie Antoinette, were
executed.
July 14 is still celebrated in many countries throughout the world, and is a public holiday in France; generally called Bastille Day or Fete National./size]

1914 ~ Robert H. Goddard Patents Liquid Rocket Fuel

1958 ~ Iraq’s Faisal Assassinated
Iraq became a republic with the assissination of King Faisal. The army officers that led the coup also killed King Faisal's entire household and his prime minister. General Abdul Karim Kassem becomes Iraq's leader.

1976 ~ Canada Abolishes Capital Punishment
House of Commons abolishes the death penalty by a free vote of 132-124.

[GordMay]

July 15

1606 ~ The great Dutch Master Rembrandt van Rijn is Born in Leiden

1774 ~ Hernanddez Sights Queen Charlotte Islands
Queen Charlotte BC - Juan Jose Perez Hernandez (l725-1775) sights Queen Charlotte Islands; contacts Haidas; names northwestern point of islands Santa Margarita; first BC place named by Europeans.

1815 ~ Napoleon Bonaparte Surrendered and is Later Exiled on St. Helena

1862 ~ CSS Arkansas Attacks Union Ships
The CSS Arkansas, the most effective ironclad on the Mississippi River, battles with Union ships commanded by Admiral David Farragut, severely damaging three ships and sustaining heavy damage herself. The encounter changed the complexion of warfare on the Mississippi and helped to reverse Rebel fortunes on the river in the summer of 1862.

1911~ Edward Shackleton, English Explorer Born

1931 ~ Author Clive Cussler Born - Founder of NUMA & Shipwreck Expert

1958 ~ US Marines Land in Lebanon
Five thousand U.S. Marines landed in Beirut, Lebanon, to protect the pro-Western government. The troops withdrew October 25, 1958.

1965 ~ Mariner 4 Studies Martian Surface
The unmanned spacecraft Mariner 4 passes over Mars at an altitude of 6,000 feet and sends back to Earth the first close-up images of the red planet.
Launched in November 1964, Mariner 4 carried a television camera and six other science instruments to study Mars and interplanetary space within the solar system. Reaching Mars on July 14, 1965, the spacecraft began sending back television images of the planet just after midnight on July 15. The pictures--nearly 22 in all--revealed a vast, barren wasteland of craters and rust-colored sand, dismissing 19th-century suspicions that an advanced civilization might exist on the planet. The canals that American astronomer Percival Lowell spied with his telescope in 1890 proved to be an optical illusion, but ancient natural waterways of some kind did seem to be evident in some regions of the planet.

1996 ~ Southern Mexico Hit with 6.5 Earthquake

[GordMay]

July 16

1845 ~ The New York Yacht Club Hosted the First American Boating Regatta

1872 - Roald Amundsen Born
Roald Amundsen,explorer, was born on this day at Borge, Norway, near Oslo, in 1872. Amundsen was the first to make a ship voyage through Canada's Northwest Passage (on the Fram, 1903-05), the first to reach the South Pole (Dec. 14, 1911), and one of the first to cross the Arctic by air. He died on or about June 18, 1928, while on a rescue mission in the Arctic Ocean.

1918 ~ Romanovs Executed
In Yekaterinburg, Russia, Czar Nicholas II and his family are executed by the Bolsheviks, bringing an end to the three-century-old Romanov dynasty. Under house arrest since March 1917, the Romanovs had been taken to a cellar under the pretense of having their photograph taken when Bolshevik troops stormed in and shot them to death.

1926 ~ National Geographic Underwater
The first underwater color photographs appeared in National Geographic magazine. The pictures were taken near the Florida Keys.

1945 ~ Fat Boy A-Test
The experimental plutonium bomb (using Canadian U-235) exploded at 5:30 a.m., in the first U.S. test of an atomic bomb. The mushroom-shaped cloud rose to a height of 41,000 feet above the New Mexico desert at Alamogordo Air Base. All life in a one-mile radius ceased to exist.

1969 ~ Apollo 11 departs Earth
At 9:32 a.m. EDT, Apollo 11, the first U.S. lunar landing mission, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a historic journey to the surface of the moon. After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19.
The next day, at 1:46 p.m., the lunar module Eagle, manned by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, separated from the command module, where a third astronaut, Michael Collins, remained. Two hours later, the Eagle began its descent to the lunar surface, and at 4:18 p.m. the craft touched down on the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong immediately radioed to Mission Control in Houston a famous message, "The Eagle has landed." At 10:39 p.m., five hours ahead of the original schedule, Armstrong opened the hatch of the lunar module. Seventeen minutes later, at 10:56 p.m., Armstrong spoke the following words to millions listening at home: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." A moment later, he stepped off the lunar module's ladder, becoming the first human to walk on the surface of the moon.

1990 ~ Phillipines ‘Quake
An earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale devastated the Philippines, killing over 1,600 people. A thousand more were missing. Damage was reported in Manila, Cabanatuan, Baguio and Luzon. It was the worst earthquake in that part of the world since 1976.

[GordMay]

July 17

1998 ~ Killer Tsunami
Just after seven in the evening, the inhabitants of the West Sepik area of Papua New Guinea felt the tremors from a magnitude 7.1 earthquake. Eye-witnesses reported that minutes later the villages were hit in quick succession by three tsunami (tidal waves) reaching heights of 14 meters (45 feet: taller than a four-story building), followed by two smaller waves. More than 2,000 people were killed and some 10,000 left homeless. In addition, many of the survivors were badly injured, with broken bones and bruising. Costas Synolakis, a researcher at UCLA and co-leader of a science team that visited PNG in early August 1998: “We were in a state of shock. It was really something we had not seen before. It was sort of a new threshold in terms of what a wave can do.”

1996 ~ TWA 800 Explodes
TWA (Trans World Airlines) flight 800, carrying 230 people, including four cockpit crew members and 14 flight attendants, exploded, falling into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Long Island, New York. The Boeing 747 had lifted off from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport at 8:19 p.m. bound for Paris, France. The explosion happened about 26 minutes later, some 40 miles east of New York, as the plane was climbing through 13,800 feet. The victims included celebrities in sports, entertainment and the arts, business people, and vacationers. Possibly the most poignant were the deaths of sixteen teen-agers, all students from the Montoursville, PA high school French club, and their five chaperones. There are several theories as to the cause of the explosion. Some believe that the airliner was sabotaged and destroyed by a bomb planted on board. Others swore they knew the plane had been struck by a U.S. missile. But, after a 16-month probe, the FBI announced it had found no evidence of a criminal act or stray (or otherwise) missile. It has concluded that the crash was caused by electrical arcing in the plane’s center fuel tank igniting fuel vapors.

1981 ~ K.C. Disaster
Two skywalks suspended from the ceiling over the atrium lobby at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, MO collapsed, killing 114 people. Five years later, two design engineers were convicted for their gross negligence.

1962 ~ U.S. Senate Rejects Medicare for Aged
1962 ~ US Performs Atmospheric Nuclear Test (“Little Feller I”) at Nevada Test Site

1958 ~ US Performs Atmospheric Nuclear Test (250 Kt) at Enwetak Atol

1840 ~ Britannia Arrives at Halifax
Samuel Cunard 1787-1865 arrives at Halifax with his daughter on his first steamship, the paddle steamer Britannia, 12 days after leaving Liverpool, England; ship then goes on to Boston on the 19th, completing the new Liverpool-Halifax-Boston mail route in 14 days and 8 hours; first scheduled transatlantic mail service by steamship, and a blow to the age of sailing ships.

1821 ~ Spain Cedes Florida to U.S.
The United States acquires Florida Territories (including parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana) from Spain as part of a deal to cancel $5 million in debts owed by the Spanish. Florida becomes a territory of the United States.

1771 ~ Hearne Reaches Arctic
Samuel Hearne 1745-1792 and his Chipewyan guide, Matonabbee, reach the partially frozen Arctic Ocean after descending the Coppermine River to its mouth; first European to reach the Arctic overland.

1774 ~ Captain James Cook arrives at New Hebrides (Vanuata)
More: http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/7557/page1.html

1603 ~ Sir Walter Ralegh (Raleigh) Arrested

1596 ~ Dutch explorer Willem Barents Arrives at Novaya Zemlya
[size=1] The ending of Dutch trade with Portugal, in 1580, causes the merchants of Amsterdam to be as interested as their London counterparts in a northeast passage to the east. In 1594, and in each of the two succeeding years, an expedition is sent into Arctic waters under the command of Willem Barents.
In 1594, and again in in 1595, Barents reaches the coast of Novaya Zemlya but fails to find a channel through to the Kara Sea. In 1596 he takes a more northerly route. On this occasion he sights both Bear Island and Spitsbergen and makes his way round the northern point of Novaya Zemlya. There the ice closes in and traps his ship.
Barents and his companions survive the winter, becoming the first Europeans to do so within the Arctic circle. But the thaw in the spring is insufficient to free the ship. Barents decides to escape southwards in two open boats. After a week at sea, he dies. But most of his crew make their way back to the Netherlands.
Barents' gallant failure diverts Dutch attention to the southern route to the east. But they retain an interest in a possible northern passage. In 1609 the Dutch East India Company commissions an experienced English explorer, Henry Hudson, to make another attempt on its behalf.

[GordMay]

July 18

1994 ~ Comet Shoemaker-Levy Collides with Jupiter

1988 ~ Abu Nidal terrorists kill 9 on “City of Poros” Cruise Ship

1976 ~ Perfect ‘10'
Nadia Comaneci, the 14-year-old star gymnast from Romania, stunned those watching the Montreal Olympic Games by executing perfect form to collect a perfect score of ‘10’ from the judges. This was the first perfect score ever recorded on the uneven parallel bars. Nadia went on to collect seven perfect scores, three gold medals, a silver and a bronze. She also won two gold and two silver medals in the 1980 Olympics.

1936 ~ Spanish Civil War

1932 ~ U.S. and Canada Sign a Treaty to Develop St. Lawrence Seaway

1925 ~ “Mein Kampf” (A. Hitler) Published

1918 ~ Nelson Mandela Born

64 A.D. ~Rome Burns
A fire erupts in Rome, spreading rapidly throughout the market area in the center of the city. When the flames finally died out more than a week later, nearly two-thirds of Rome had been destroyed.
Emperor Nero used the fire as an opportunity to rebuild Rome in a more orderly Greek style and began construction on a massive palace called the Domus Aureus. Some speculated that the emperor had ordered the burning of Rome to indulge his architectural tastes, but he was away in Antium when the conflagration began. According to later Roman historians, Nero blamed members of the mysterious Christian cult for the fire and launched the first Roman persecution of Christians in response.