This Day in History

[GordMay]

July 18

0064: The great fire of Rome breaks out, and destroys much of the city. Despite the well-known apocryphal stories, there is no evidence that the Roman emperor, Nero, either started the fire, or played the fiddle while it burned. Still, he did use the disaster to further his political agenda.

1290: King Edward I orders expulsion of Jews from England, this edict will remain in place for 350 years.

1716: Decree orders all Jews expelled from Brussels.

1792: The US Revolutionary War naval hero, John Paul Jones, dies, in his Paris apartment, where he was awaiting a commission as the United States consul to Algiers. Commander Jones, remembered as one of the most daring and successful naval commanders of the American Revolution. In September 1779, Jones fought one of the fiercest battles in naval history, when he led the USS “Bonhomme Richard” frigate [named for Benjamin Franklin], in an engagement with the 50-gun British warship HMS “Serapis”. After the Bonhomme Richard was struck, it began taking on water and caught fire. When the British captain of the “Serapis” ordered Jones to surrender, he famously replied, “I have not yet begun to fight!” A few hours later, the captain and crew of the “Serapis” admitted defeat, and Jones took command of the British ship.

1877: Inventor Thomas Edison records the human voice for the first time.

1892: First human test of a vaccine against cholera; Ukrainian bacteriologist Waldemar Huffkine risks his life, by testing it on himself.

1914: Mahatma Gandhi leaves South Africa, after successfully leading campaigns of Passive Resistance.

1918: French General Ferdinand Foch launched a counterstrike, that forced the Germans into a hasty retreat, during the Second Battle of the Marne, the last large German offensive of World War I.

1925: The first volume of "Mein Kampf", the political manifesto written by Adolf Hitler, was published, and two years later the second volume appeared. Original title was the catchy "Four and a Half Years (of Struggle) Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice".

1932: US and Canada sign a treaty, to develop St Lawrence Seaway.

1942: The German Me-262, the first jet-propelled aircraft to fly in combat, makes its first test flight.

1947: British seize "Exodus 1947", ship of Jewish immigrants to Palestine
1947: King George VI signs Indian Independence Act.

1966: Carl Sagan turns 1 billion seconds old.

1968: The Intel Corporation is founded, in Santa Clara, California.

1969: Shortly after leaving a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy, of Massachusetts, drives an Oldsmobile off a wooden bridge, into a tide-swept pond. Kennedy escaped the submerged car, but his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, did not.

1976: For her performance in the uneven parallel bars, at the Olympic Games in Montreal, Nadia Comăneci, of Romania, became the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10 [scores a total of 7 Tens], in an Olympic gymnastic event.

1986: Video of Titanic wreckage released.

1994: Comet Shoemaker-Levy's largest collision with Jupiter leaves black spot 12,000 km across.

2013: Detroit, Mi, submitted a claim for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, the largest such filing for a U.S. city ever; the city officially emerged from bankruptcy the following year.

2018: New Earth geological age announced, the ‘Meghalayan Age’ [4,200 years ago, during a worldwide megadrought, to the present], by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. Geologists divide the planet’s 4.54-billion-year history into a series of smaller subdivisions. Earth is currently situated in the Phanerozoic Eon, Cenozoic Era, Quaternary Period, Holocene Epoch, and Meghalayan Age.
More ➥ https://earthsky.org/earth/new-name-...ra-meghalayan/

[GordMay]

July 19

1545: During the Battle of the Solent, the “Mary Rose”, a warship that often served as King Henry VIII's flagship, capsized and sank, near Portsmouth; 73 die. The wreck was raised in 1982, and put on display in 2013.

1553: After only nine days as the monarch of England, Lady Jane Grey [Protestant] is deposed, in favor of her cousin Mary (aka: ‘Bloody Mary’) [Catholic]. The 15-year-old, Lady Jane had only reluctantly agreed to be put on the throne. The decision would result in her execution.

1595: Astronomer Johannes Kepler has an epiphany, and develops his theory of the geometrical basis of the universe, while teaching in Graz.

1836: HMS “Beagle”, with Charles Darwin, arrives in Ascension Island.

1843: The steamship SS “Great Britain” is launched, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, it is the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull, or screw propeller, and the largest vessel afloat in the world, at 322 ft (98m) in length. She had both masts, for sail, and a 2 cylinder engine.

1848: The women's suffrage movement, in the United States, was launched, with the opening of the Seneca Falls Convention, which sought to gain certain rights and privileges for women, notably the right to vote.

1869: Louis Riel speaks at a meeting of Metis residents, about rights, setting in motion the events now referred to as the Red River Rebellion.

1945: USS “Cod” saves 51 sailors, from Dutch sub, in only sub-to-sub rescue.

1954: Elvis Presley's debut single, a cover of Arthur Cruddup's "That's All Right" is released.

1979: Two giant supertankers [“Atlantic Empress” and “Aegean Captain”] collide near Tobago, in the Caribbean Sea, killing 27 crew members, and spilling 287,000 tons of crude oil. On 3 August, the “Empress” sank.

2017: US scientists calculate total amount plastic ever produced to date - 8.3 billion tonnes, equal to weight of 1 billion elephants.

2021: UK lifts most COVID-19 restriction,s on so-called 'Freedom Day", despite 50,000 new daily infections, the highest levels since January. On Friday, there were 51,870 new cases.
A letter from more than 100 scientists [122?] and doctors, published in the Lancet, labelled the government's reopening plan a "dangerous and unethical experiment".
➥ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...589-0/fulltext

[GordMay]

July 20

1304: Italian scholar, poet, Petrarch born.

1588: The Spanish Armada sets sail from Corunna.

1738: French explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de la Vérendrye reaches the western shore of Lake Michigan.

1793: Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie completes the first European east-to-west crossing of America, north of Mexico.

1798: Napoleon's Army of Egypt used a new military tactic, the massive divisional square, to defeat the Egyptian forces of Murād Bey, at the Battle of the Pyramids, during Napoleon's Egyptian campaign.

1871: British Columbia joins the confederation of Canada.

1881: Five years after General George A. Custer’s infamous defeat, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Hunkpapa Teton Sioux leader, Sitting Bull, surrenders to the U.S. Army, which promises amnesty for him and his followers. Pursued by the U.S. Army after the victory, he escaped to Canada, with his followers, but in 1881, with his people starving, he returned to the United States and surrendered. He was held as a prisoner of war, at Fort Randall, in South Dakota territory, for two years, and then was permitted to live on Standing Rock Reservation straddling North and South Dakota territory. On December 15, 1890, American Indian police burst into Sitting Bull’s house, in the Grand River area of South Dakota, and attempted to arrest him, for supporting the 'Ghost Dance' movement. Sitting Bull was fatally shot, and died within hours.

1914: Armed resistance against British rule begins, in Ulster.

1919: Kiwis explorer & mountaineer, Sir Edmund Hillary born.

1923: Francisco [Pancho] Villa is assassinated, in Parral, Chihuahua.

1925: The trial of high-school teacher John T. Scopes ended, with his conviction, in Tennessee; he had taught Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, in violation of a state law.

1933: Vatican state secretary Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) signs accord with Adolf Hitler.

1944: During World War II, German military leaders attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler in the July Plot. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, chief of the army reserve, had been given the task of planting a bomb during a conference that was to be held at Berchtesgaden, but was later moved to Hitler’s “Wolf’s Lair, a command post at Rastenburg, Prussia. Stauffenberg planted the explosive in a briefcase, which he placed under a table, then left quickly. Hitler was studying a map of the Eastern front as Colonel Heinz Brandt, trying to get a better look at the map, moved the briefcase out of place, farther away from where the Fuhrer was standing. At 12:42 p.m. the bomb went off. When the smoke cleared, Hitler was wounded, charred, and even suffered the temporary paralysis of one arm; but he was very much alive. (He was even well enough to keep an appointment with Benito Mussolini that very afternoon. He gave Il Duce a tour of the bomb site.) Four others present died from their wounds.
1944: US President FDR nominated for an unprecedented 4th term, at Democratic convention.

1956: Confirmation of the first detection of the neutrino by Clyde Cowan, Frederick Reines, F. B. Harrison, H. W. Kruse, and A. D. McGuire published in "Science" (Cowan–Reines neutrino experiment).

1968: At Chicago's Soldier Field, the first Special Olympics began, and some 1,000 athletes, all of whom had intellectual disabilities, participated.

1969: The 'Eagle' lunar landing module, carrying U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin (“Buzz”) Aldrin, landed on the Moon, and several hours later Armstrong became the first person to set foot on its surface.

1976: The Viking 1 lander touched down, at Chryse Planitia, on Mars.

1977: A flash flood hits Johnstown, Pennsylvania, killing 84 people, and causing $350 million in damages. This flood came 88 years after the infamous Great Flood of 1889, that killed more than 2,000 people in Johnstown. As they had in the first flood, the dams in the Conemaugh Valley failed, bringing disaster to the town.

1983: The world's lowest recorded temperature, −128.6 °F (−89.2 °C), was measured, at Vostok Station, Antarctica.

1985: "Today's the day!" Divers find wreck of Spanish galleon "Atocha".
At the time of her sinking, “Nuestra Señora de Atocha” was heavily laden with copper, silver, gold, tobacco, gems, and indigo from Spanish ports at Cartagena and Porto Bello in New Granada (present-day Colombia and Panama, respectively) and Havana, bound for Spain.
Beginning in 1969, American treasure hunters Mel Fisher, Finley Ricard and a team of sub-contractors, funded by investors and others in a joint venture, Treasure Salvors, Inc., searched the sea bed for “Nuestra Señora de Atocha” for sixteen and a half years. In 1970, Fisher had recovered portions of the wrecked cargo of the sister ship “Santa Margarita”. He also proposed the idea to several other potential helpers, who were discouraged by the fact that this dangerous professional diving job would be paid at minimum wage unless the ship could be found. Silver bars apparently from the “Atocha” were found in 1973, with cannon inscribed such to verify the wreck of “Atocha” were found by Fisher's son, Dirk, in 1975. Subsequently, a substantial part of its remaining cargo of silver, gold and emeralds was discovered. It was Fisher's son, Kane, who radioed the news to Treasure Salvors headquarters on the Florida coast, from the salvage boat “Dauntless”.
➥ https://web.archive.org/web/20070419...r.org/1622.htm

1985: The government of Aruba passes legislation to secede from the Netherlands Antilles.

2005: Canada becomes the fourth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage, after the bill C-38 receives its Royal Assent.

2017: China announces a plan against “foreign garbage” banning 24 categories of plastic and recyclable waste from 2018.

2020: Announcement that a COVID-19 vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19), is able to trigger immune response, and antibodies.

[GordMay]

July 21

0365: A powerful earthquake, off the coast of Greece [near Crete], causes a tsunami that devastates the city of Alexandria, Egypt. Although there were no measuring tools at the time, scientists now estimate that the quake was actually two tremors in succession, the largest of which is thought to have had a magnitude of 8.0.
Ships in the harbor at Alexandria were overturned, as the water near the coast receded suddenly. Reports indicate that many people rushed out to loot the hapless ships. The tsunami wave then rushed in, and carried the ships over the sea walls, landing many on top of buildings. In Alexandria, approximately 5,000 people lost their lives and 50,000 homes were destroyed. The surrounding villages and towns suffered even greater destruction. Many were virtually wiped off the map. Outside the city, 45,000 people were killed. In addition, the inundation of saltwater rendered farmland useless, for years to come. Evidence indicates that the area’s shoreline was permanently changed by the disaster.

1588: First engagement between the English fleet and the Spanish Armada, off the Eddystone Rocks.

1595: Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña is the first European to discover the Marquesas Islands, in Eastern Polynesia.

1831: Belgium gains independence from Netherlands, Leopold I made king.

1861: In the first major battle of the American Civil War, Confederate forces defeat the Union Army, along Bull Run, near Manassas Junction, Virginia. The battle becomes known as Manassas by the Confederates, while the Union calls it [First] Bull Run.

1904: After 13 years, the 4,607-mile Trans-Siberian railway is completed.

1906: French Captain Alfred Dreyfus is vindicated of his earlier court-martial, for spying for Germany.

1955: USS “Seawolf” launched, 1st submarine powered by liquid metal cooled nuclear reactor.

1959: 1st nuclear powered merchant ship, NS “Savannah”, named, Camden NJ.

1960: Francis Chichester arrives in NY, aboard “Gypsy Moth II”, setting record of 40 days for a solo Atlantic crossing.
1960: Sirimavo Bandaranaike becomes the world's 1st female elected head of government, as Prime Minister of Ceylon [now Sri Lanka].

1969: Neil Armstrong [“Apollo 11"] becomes the first person to step on the Moon, at 2:56:15 AM GMT. Buzz Aldrin joined him 19 minutes later. It is estimated over 500 million people, around the world, watched history unfold.

1970: After 11 years of construction, the Aswan High Dam, across the Nile River, in Egypt, is completed.

1976: 1st outbreak of "Legionnaire's Disease" kills 29, in Philadelphia.

1997: The fully restored USS “Constitution” [aka "Old Ironsides"] celebrates her 200th birthday, setting sail from Marblehead, Massachusetts, for the first time in 116 years.

2002: WorldCom Inc. files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the then largest such filing, in United States history, after disclosing it had inflated profits by nearly $4 billion, through deceptive accounting practices from 1999 - 2002, to mask its poor earnings, and presenting a false picture of financial growth and profitability of the company.

2005: Terrorists attack the London underground system and Busses, by planting bombs on three subways, and on one bus, but unlike an earlier attack, the bombs create only miner blasts, as only the detonators explode, and not the main bombs.

2011: NASA’s space shuttle program completes its final, and 135th, mission, when the shuttle “Atlantis” [STS-135] lands at Kennedy Space Center, in Florida.

[GordMay]

July 22

1298: King Edward I defeats the Scots under William Wallace at Falkirk.

1306: King Phillip ‘the Fair’, orders expulsion of Jews, out of France.

1793: Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Euro-American to complete a transcontinental crossing of Canada.

1812: The duke of Wellington defeated “40,000 Frenchmen in 40 minutes” at Salamanca, Spain, during the Peninsular War.

1898: Crew of Belgian RV “Belgica” see 1st sunrise in 1600 hrs - 1st expedition to endure Antarctic winter.

1933: American aviator Wiley Post returns to Floyd Bennett Field, in New York, having flown 15,596 miles (25,099 km), solo around the world, in 7 days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes. He was the first aviator to accomplish the feat.

1934: Outside Chicago’s Biograph Theatre, notorious criminal John Dillinger, America’s ‘Public Enemy No. 1', is killed, in a hail of bullets fired by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents.

1938: The Third Reich issues special identity cards, for Jewish Germans.

1942: Himmler ordered Rudolph Hoess, an SS major, to clean up the Warsaw ghetto, the Jewish quarter, enclosed by barbed wire and brick walls, which was to be depopulated, and the inhabitants transported to Treblinka. Rudolph Hoess started the systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto on July 22nd, with thousands rounded up daily, and transported to the newly constructed concentration camp, at Treblinka, in Poland. Within just seven weeks of Himmler's order, more than 250,000 Jews were taken to Treblinka by rail, and gassed to death.

1960: Cuba nationalizes all (US-owned) sugar factories.

1987: In a dramatic turnaround, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev indicates that he is willing to negotiate a ban on intermediate-range nuclear missiles, without conditions, paving the way for the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, with the United States.

1992: Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar escaped from police custody, as he faced transfer from La Catedral, a luxurious prison that he had built, to a more secure facility; he remained a fugitive until December 1993, when he was killed during a shootout with law enforcement.

1994: Former NFL running back, broadcaster, and actor O.J. Simpson pleads "Absolutely 100% Not Guilty", of murder.

2005: A suspected terrorist is shot dead by police, at Stockwell underground station, in south London. A few days later, the man who police had killed, was identified as Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazillian Electrician, who had nothing to do with terrorist activities.

2009 : The longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, (when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partially obscuring Earth's view of the Sun) lasting up to 6 minutes and 38.8 seconds, occurs off the coast of Southeast Asia. The total eclipse was seen for shorter time-spans in the Maldives, northern Pakistan, northern India, northern Bangladesh, Bhutan, northern Philippines, central China and the Pacific Ocean.

2011: Terrorist attacks on government buildings, in central Oslo, and at a youth camp, on the island of Utøya, in Norway, resulted in the deaths of 77 people; Anders Behring Breivik later confessed to the attacks.

[GordMay]

JULY 23

1829: William Austin Burt patents America's first "typographer" (typewriter).

1840: Union Act passed by British Parliament, uniting Upper & Lower Canada.

1865: William Booth founds the Salvation Army.

1868: The 14th Amendment is ratified, granting citizenship to African Americans.

1888: John Boyd Dunlop applies to patent pneumatic tire.

1903: Ford Motor Company sold its first automobile, a Ford Model A; five years later it introduced the hugely influential Model T.

1944: Conference of Bretton Woods signed; IMF operations begin.

1945: Marshal Philippe Pétain, leader of the French Vichy collaborationist regime, during World War II, goes on trial.

1964: Egyptian munition ship "Star of Alexandria" explodes at dockside, in Bone, Algeria. 100 die, 160 injured, $20 million damage.

1972: 1st Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS) is launched.

1982: International Whaling Commission votes for total ban on commercial whaling (starting 1985).

1983: “Gimli Glider” Air Canada Flight 143, a Boeing 767, runs out of fuel, over Red Lake, Ontario, halfway between Montreal and Edmonton, and makes a deadstick landing at the former RCAF Station Gimli, Manitoba, which was being used as a race track. Miraculously, they landed without any severe injuries to passengers, crew, or people on the ground. Even the aircraft itself went on to serve another 25 years with the airline.
➥ https://simpleflying.com/gimli-glider/

1995: Two astronomers, Alan Hale in New Mexico, and Thomas Bopp in Arizona, almost simultaneously discover a comet, which becomes visible to the naked eye nearly a year later.

1997: Slobodan Milošević became president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (comprising Serbia and Montenegro), after serving as president of Serbia, from 1989; he was later charged with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, relating to the Kosovo conflict, and he died during his trial in 2006.

2015: NASA's Kepler mission announces discovery of the most Earth-like planet yet - Kepler-452b, 1,400 light years from Earth.

2018: Japan records its highest ever temperature, at 41.1 degrees (105.98F), in Kumagaya.

2019: US Senate passes bill, championed by comedian Jon Stewart, to ensure 9/11 first responders fund never runs out of money.

2020: China launches its first mission to Mars, “Tianwen-1", a combined orbiter, lander and rover, from Wenchang Launch Site, Hainan Island.

[GordMay]

JULY 24

1534: Jacques Cartier lands in Canada, claims it for France.

1567: Mary Queen of Scots is forced to abdicate; her 1-year-old son becomes King James VI of Scots.

1701: Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac establishes Fort Pontchartrain for France, at present-day Detroit, Michigan.

1704: Admiral George Rooke takes Gibraltar from the Spanish.

1847: Brigham Young, and his fellow Mormons [Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints], arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah.

1911: American archeologist Hiram Bingham gets his first look at the ruins of Machu Picchu, an ancient Inca settlement, in Peru.

1915: In one of the worst maritime disasters in American history, the passenger liner SS “Eastland” capsized in the Chicago River, killing more than 840 people, in Chicago.

1917: Dutch-born dancer and courtesan Mata Hari, whose name became a synonym for the seductive female spy, went on trial, accused of spying for Germany, and was subsequently found guilty, and shot by a firing squad.

1937: Alabama drops charges against 5 blacks, accused of rape, in Scottsboro.

1959: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and U.S. Vice President Richard M. Nixon engaged in the “kitchen debate”, at an American exhibition in Moscow.

1969: “Apollo 11" safely returns to Earth.

1974: The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard M. Nixon had to provide transcripts of Watergate tapes, to special prosecutor Leon Jaworski.

1979: Ted Bundy was found guilty of murdering two sorority sisters. Although his exact number of victims is unknown, Bundy confessed to more than 30 murders. He was executed, in the electric chair, on January 24th, 1989.

1985: French DGSE officers, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, are arrested, and charged with murder, over the bombing of the Greenpeace flagship, “Rainbow Warrior”, sinking the vessel, and killing Portugal-born Greenpeace photographer, Fernando Pereira, in Auckland, New Zealand. Both eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and were sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.

1987: IBM-PC DOS Version 3.3 (updated) released.

[GordMay]

JULY 25

1797: Horatio Nelson loses more than 300 men, and his right arm, during the failed conquest attempt of Tenerife (Spain).

1814: British troops, commanded by General Phineas Riall, thwarted an invasion of Canada, by a U.S. force under General Jacob Brown, in the Battle of Lundy's Lane [near Niagara Falls], during the War of 1812.
1814: English engineer George Stephenson introduces his first steam locomotive, a travelling engine designed for hauling coal on the Killingworth wagonway, named Blücher.

1866: Ulysses S. Grant named 1st General of Union Army.

1897: Writer Jack London sails to join the Klondike Gold Rush, where he will write his first successful stories.

1898: 1st US troops land, & occupy Puerto Rico, at Guanica Bay.

1909: French aviator Louis Bleriot becomes the first man to fly across the English Channel in an airplane.

1943: Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini is overthrown, in a coup, and arrested, on the authority of King Victor Emmanuel III.

1952: Puerto Rico becomes a self-governing US commonwealth (Constitution Day).

1956: the Italian ocean liner Andrea Doria and the Swedish ocean liner Stockholm collide in a heavy Atlantic fog, 45 miles south of Nantucket Island. Fifty-one passengers and crew were killed in the collision, which ripped a great hole in the broad side of the Italian vessel. Miraculously, all 1,660 survivors on the Andrea Doria were rescued from the severely listing ship, before it sunk late the next morning.

1963: US, Russia & Britain sign nuclear Test ban treaty.

1978: Louise Joy Brown, the first human conceived using in vitro fertilization [IVF], pioneered by doctors Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards, was born in Manchester, England.

1984: Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space. The cosmonaut was part of the Soyuz T-12 mission, which docked at the Salyut 7 Space station. As part of the mission, she spent 3.5 hours in space testing tools. Savitskaya was also the second woman to go into space and the first to go to space twice.

2000: Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde supersonic passenger jet, F-BTSC, crashes, just after takeoff from Paris, killing all 109 aboard, and 4 on the ground.

2016: Verizon announces $4.83 billion purchase of Yahoo.

2018: Liquid lake found on Mars, under its South Pole, by European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter.
➥ https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44952710

2019: US Justice department announces it is resuming the Federal death penalty, scheduling five executions.

2020: Cargo ship MV “Wakashio” runs aground, off the coast of Mauritius, and begins leaking oil.

[GordMay]

JULY 26

1267: Inquisition forms in Rome, under Pope Clement IV.

1499: Spanish conquistador Alonso de Ojeda discovers Curacao Island.

1519: Francisco Pizarro receives royal charter to "discover and conquer" Peru, and the west coast of South America.

1529: Francisco Pizarro appointed Governor of Peru.

1533: Francisco Pizarro orders the death of the last Sapa Inca Emperor, Atahualpa.

1579: Francis Drake leaves San Francisco, to cross Pacific Ocean.

1588: English Admiral John Hawkins knighted, for his actions against the Spanish Armada.

1758: British forces capture France's Fortress of Louisbourg, after a seven-week siege.

1775: The U.S. Postal Service was established, by the Second Continental Congress, and Benjamin Franklin was named the first postmaster general.

1832: HMS “Beagle” anchors in Montevideo.

1847: The Republic of Liberia, formerly a colony of the American Colonization Society, declares its independence. Under pressure from Britain, the United States hesitantly accepted Liberian sovereignty, making the West African nation the first democratic republic in African history.

1891: France annexes Tahiti.

1941: President Franklin Roosevelt seizes all Japanese assets in the United States, in retaliation for the Japanese occupation of French Indo-China.

1945: US cruiser “Indianapolis” reaches Tinian with atom bomb.

1953: Fidel Castro attacked the Moncada military fortress, in Santiago de Cuba, and, although unsuccessful, the event later inspired the 26th of July Movement, which culminated in the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's regime in Cuba.

1956: Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser seized control of the British and French-owned Suez Canal, and nationalized it, sparking a crisis that later resulted in French, British, and Israeli forces briefly occupying parts of Egypt.

1965: The Republic of Maldives gained its independence from Britain.

1969: Sharon Sites Adams, 39, becomes 1st lady to solo sail the Pacific.

1989: Robert Tappan Morris, a graduate student from Cornell University, was indicted on a felony charge, for releasing a computer virus, that disrupted thousands of computers throughout the United States, in the fall of 1988.

1996: IBM is given a contract by the Department of Energy to build the worlds most powerful custom supercomputer.
1996: AT&T Corp. and Microsoft Corp. announced an alliance to promote Microsoft's World Wide Web browser, ‘Internet Explorer’, in a move designed to allow both giants to gain easier entrance into the burgeoning Internet business sphere.

2008: The FCC approves the merger of the two satellite radio companies, Sirius and XM.

2012: North Korea is hit by Tropical Storm ‘Khanun’, killing 88 people, and leaving 60,000 people homeless.

2016: At the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton was officially nominated for president, becoming the first woman to top the presidential ticket of a major party in the United States.

2017: Great Britain announces it will ban gasoline and diesel cars by 2040.

2018: Facebook has the single worst day of any public company, on the stock market - losing 19% or $119 billion market value.
2018: Observation of a black hole by The Very Large Telescope, in Chile, proves Albert Einstein's prediction of "gravitational redshift", published in "Journal Astronomy & Astrophysics".

[GordMay]

July 27

1501: Nicolaus Copernicus formally installed as a canon of Frauenberg Cathedral.

1586: Walter Raleigh brings the 1st tobacco to England, from Virginia.

1661:The British Parliament passes a second Navigation Act, requiring all goods bound for the colonies, be sent in British ships from British ports.

1794: Maximilien Robespierre, the architect of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, is overthrown and arrested by the National Convention. As the leading member of the Committee of Public Safety from 1793,

1836: The ship the "Duke of York" arrives, with the first colonists at Nepean Bay, Kangaroo Island, South Australia.

1862: Hurricane hits Canton; about 40,000 die.

1866: Transatlantic telegraph cable successfully (in second attempt) comes ashore, at Heart's Content, Newfoundland. Laid out by Isambard Kingdom Brunel's “Great Eastern” steamship (1,686 miles long).

1890: Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh shoots himself, in Auvers-sur-Oise, dies of injuries 2 days later.

1909: Orville Wright and Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm, of the army signal corps, test 1st US Army airplane, flying 1h12m40s.

1909: British ship SS “Waratah” is last seen, en-route from Durban to Cape Town; 211 on board are missing, and no trace of the ship ever found.

1920: Radio compass used for 1st time for aircraft navigation.

1921: At the University of Toronto, Canadian scientists Frederick Banting and Charles Best successfully isolate insulin—a hormone they believe could prevent diabetes—for the first time. Within a year, the first human sufferers of diabetes were receiving insulin treatments.

1953: North Korea, China, and the United Nations sign armistice, to stop fighting and divide Korea, at the 38th parallel.

1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs a bill requiring cigarette makers to print health warnings, on all cigarette packages, about the effects of smoking.

1974: The US House Judiciary Committee recommends [votes 27-11] that America’s 37th president, Richard M. Nixon, be impeached [the first article of impeachment against the president was passed this date, & 2 more articles, for abuse of power and contempt of Congress, were approved on July 29 and 30], and removed from office.

1980: Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, dies in Cairo, Egypt.

1987: First expedited salvaging of “Titanic” wreck begins, by RMS Titanic, Inc.

2002: Ukraine airshow disaster: A Sukhoi Su-27 fighter crashes, during an air show at Lviv, Ukraine killing 85, injuring more than 100, largest air show disaster in history.

2014: Liberia shuts down most of its borders, with fears about the spread of Ebola epidemic.

2020: WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus states that COVID-19 is "easily the most severe" global health emergency the WHO has faced.

[GordMay]

The first man to fly in a hurricane took an unauthorized flight

On Tuesday, July 27, 1943, U.S. Army Air Forces Lt. Col. Joseph B. Duckworth flew into the eye of the hurricane.
This was the first time someone deliberately flew into a hurricane.

Before World War II, Duckworth was a pilot for Eastern Air Lines. In 1940, Duckworth was called to teach air cadets instrument flying. He wrote many of the manuals on instrument flying. By 1943, Duckworth was leading instrument training at Bryan Army Air Field in Texas, teaching mostly British pilots.
On July 27, classes were cancelled due to the 1943 Surprise Hurricane. The hurricane suddenly hit Galveston as a Category 2.

So Duckworth had a day off. Some say that Duckworth was responding to a dare, and others say it was just on a whim, but he flew his AT-6 “Texan” trainer aircraft into the hurricane. Duckworth and navigator Lt. Ralph O’Hair successfully flew into the storm, and found the eye near Houston.

When the men returned, the base meteorologist Lt. William Jones-Burdick insisted that Duckworth take him into the storm as well. As Duckworth flew back into the storm, Jones-Burdick sat in the back and took notes.

Because the hurricane took place during the War, storm information was not disseminated to the public. The Weather Bureau in New Orleans needed to clear all advisories, and the storm information wasn't given the go-ahead. Because of this, the public was not prepared for the storm, and 19 people died. This was the last time that the U.S. government censored hurricane advisories.

Duckworth got into a little bit of trouble for taking unauthorized flights, but ultimately received a medal, for adding to the field of hurricane tracking. He proved that it is possible to fly right into the eye of a hurricane.

[GordMay]

“Insulin was discovered 100 years ago – but it took a lot more than one scientific breakthrough to get a diabetes treatment to patients” ~ by James P. Brody
➥ https://theconversation.com/insulin-...atients-162743

[El Pinguino]

Is it only me that is worried that this isn't so much 'This day in history' but 'Current Events" ?

[GordMay]

July 28

1540: Henry VIII of England marries Catherine Howard, fifth wife.
1540: Thomas Cromwell is beheaded, on Tower Hill, in England.

1586: Sir Thomas Harriot introduces potatoes to Europe on return to England.

1615: French explorer Samuel de Champlain discovers Lake Huron, on his seventh voyage to the New World.

1741: Captain Vitus Bering discovers Mount St Elias, Alaska.

1821: Peru declared its independence from Spain.

1849: “Memmon” is first clipper to reach San Francisco, 120 days out of NY.

1858: First use of fingerprints as a means of identification, is made by Sir William James Herschel, of the Indian Civil Service.

1868: Following its ratification by the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states, the 14th Amendment, granting citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, including formerly enslaved people, is officially adopted into the U.S. Constitution.

1914: Using the assassination of the Austrian archduke Francis Ferdinand, as a pretext to present Serbia with an unacceptable ultimatum, Austria-Hungary declared war on the Slavic country, sparking World War I.
1914: First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill orders British Grand Fleet to Scapa Flow.

1945: A United States B-25 Mitchell bomber crashes into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building, killing 14 people. "Elevator girl" Betty Lou Oliver survives falling 75 stories.
1945: US Senate ratifies United Nations charter 89-2.

1976: At 3:42 a.m., an earthquake measuring between 7.8 and 8.2 magnitude, on the Richter scale, flattens Tangshan, a Chinese industrial city, with a population of about one million people. An estimated 242,000 people in Tangshan and surrounding areas were killed, making the earthquake one of the deadliest in recorded history, surpassed only by the 300,000 who died in the Calcutta earthquake in 1737, and the 830,000 thought to have perished in China’s Shaanxi province in 1556.

1977: 1st oil through the TransAlaska Pipeline System reaches Valdez, Alaska.

1986: NASA releases transcript from doomed “Challenger”, pilot Michael Smith could be heard saying, "Uh-oh!" as spacecraft disintegrated.
➥ https://history.nasa.gov/transcript.html

1996: ‘Kennewick Man’, the remains of a prehistoric man, is discovered near Kennewick, Washington. He, or his forebears, may have been Asian coastal seafarers [the "coastal migration" theory of the peopling of the Americas].
➥ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...ets-180952462/

2005: The Irish Republican Army (IRA) announces an end to its 30-year armed campaign in Northern Ireland.

2016: Earliest evidence of cancer found in 1.7 million-year-old toe fossil from Swartkrans Cave, South Africa, published in "South African Journal of Science".
➥ Earliest hominin cancer: 1.7-million-year-old osteosarcoma from Swartkrans Cave, South Africa

[GordMay]

July 29

0904: Thessalonica is sacked, by Saracen pirates, led by renegade Leo of Tripoli.

1279: Five emissaries, dispatched by Kublai Khan, from the Mongol Yuan dynasty, are beheaded by Japan.

1588: The Spanish Armada, the great fleet sent by King Philip II of Spain to invade England, was first sighted by the English off Lizard Point, Cornwall. Off the coast of Gravelines, France, Spain’s so-called “Invincible Armada” is defeated by an English naval force under the command of Lord Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake. After eight hours of furious fighting, a change in wind direction prompted the Spanish to break off from the battle and retreat toward the North Sea. Its hopes of invasion crushed, the remnants of the Spanish Armada began a long and difficult journey back to Spain, around Scotland and Ireland. Some of the damaged ships foundered in the sea, while others were driven onto the coast of Ireland and wrecked. By the time the last of the surviving fleet reached Spain in October, half of the original Armada was lost, and some 15,000 men had perished.

1609: Samuel de Champlain shoots and kills two Iroquois chiefs, at Ticonderoga, New York. setting the stage for French-Iroquois conflicts for the next 150 years.

1715: 10 Spanish treasure galleons sunk off Florida coast, by a hurricane.

1783: Skaptar Volcano, on Iceland, erupts, killing about 9,000.

1836: The Arc de Triomphe, one of the largest triumphal arches in the world, was officially inaugurated in Paris.

1851: Annibale de Gasparis discovers asteroid 15 Eunomia.

1890: Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, one of the greatest of the Post-Impressionists, died in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, two days after shooting himself.

1905: Swedish economist and statesman Dag Hammarskjöld, who served as the second secretary-general (1953–61) of the United Nations, and received the 1961 Nobel Peace Prize, was born.

1921: Adolf Hitler becomes the leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ [Nazi] Party.

1927: 1st iron lung installed (Bellevue hospital, NY).

1945: Japanese submarine “I-58" sinks the American cruiser “Indianapolis”, killing 883 seamen, in the worst loss in the history of the U.S. navy. More than 800 fell into the Pacific. Many died due to injuries during the sinking, but the remaining seamen were left to flounder in the Pacific, fend off sharks, drink sea water, for 84 hours, before help arrived, and only 318 survived. The rest were eaten by sharks, or drowned. The USS “Indianapolis” had just delivered key components of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, to the Pacific island of Tinian, prior to it's sinking by the submarine.

1949: Moscow ends the blockade of West Berlin.

1956: Jacques Cousteau's “Calypso” anchors in 7,500 m of water (record).

1957: The International Atomic Energy Agency was created. The independent UN agency aims to ban the use of nuclear energy for military purposes. American W. Sterling Cole served as the agency's first director general.

1958: Criticized for allowing the Soviet Union to launch the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth (Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957), U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation that created NASA.

1961: Wallis and Futuna Islands become a French overseas territory.

1967: Fire [caused by accidental rocket launch] aboard carrier USS “Forrestal”, in Gulf of Tonkin, kills 134.

1968: Mount Arenal, Costa Rica kills 80, in Pelee-type eruption.
1968: Pope Paul VI banned the contraceptive pill as well as all other artificial means of birth control.

1996: Track and field legend Carl Lewis wins his fourth consecutive Olympic gold medal in the long jump. It was the ninth, and final, Olympic gold of his career.

2005: Planetary scientists formally announced the discovery of what was believed to be the 10th planet; it was later designated a dwarf planet and given the name 'Eris'.

2008: The U.S. House of Representatives publicly apologized for the institution of slavery and Jim Crow laws, that discriminated against African Americans.

2012: Tropical Storm 'Khanun' kills 88 people, and leaves 60,000 homeless, in North Korea.

2015: Part of missing airliner ‘MH370' is found, on the island of Reunion. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board.