Today In History – July

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On this day in history…

July 31

781 The oldest recorded eruption of Mt. Fuji (Traditional Japanese date: July 6, 781).

1498 Christopher Columbus on his third voyage discovers the island of Trinidad

1792 Cornerstone laid for 1st US government building: US Mint in Philaelphia

1856 Christchurch, New Zealand, is chartered as a city.

1865 The first narrow gauge mainline railway in the world opens at Grandchester, Australia.

1938 Archaeologists discover engraved gold and silver plates from King Darius in Persepolis.

1954 First ascent of K2, by an Italian expedition led by Ardito Desio.

1965 Cigarette advertising banned on British TV

1970 Black Tot Day: the last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy (started 1740)

2006 Fidel Castro hands over power temporarily to brother Raúl Castro. This leads to a celebration in Little Havana (La Pequeña Habana in Spanish), Miami, Florida, where many Cuban Americans participated.

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July 30

1178 Frederick I (Barbarossa), Holy Roman Emperor, crowned King of Burgundy

1844 First US yacht club – NY Yacht Club organized by John Cox Stevens and 8 friends aboard the Gimcrack

1923 New Zealand claims Ross Dependency

1928 George Eastman shows first colour motion pictures (US)

1966 FIFA World Cup: England beats West Germany 4-2 for football’s 8th World Cup in London

1997 Eighteen lives are lost in the Thredbo Landslide in New South Wales, Australia.

2003 The last ‘old style’ Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line in Mexico

2006 World’s longest running music show Top of the Pops is broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. The show had aired for 42 years.

2012 Indian power grid failure leaves over 300 million without electricity

2013 Mamnoon Hussain is elected President of Pakistan

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July 29

1567 James VI is crowned King of Scots at Stirling

1655 Biggest town hall in the world opens in Amsterdam

1783 Skaptar Volcano on Iceland erupts killing about 9,000

1836 Inauguration of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris

1848 Irish Potato Famine: Tipperary Revolt – an unsuccessful nationalist revolt against British rule put down by police

1899 The First Hague Convention is signed.

1907 Sir Robert Baden-Powell forms Boy Scouts in England

1923 Albert Einstein speaks on pacifism in Berlin

2013 €103 million of diamonds is stolen from the Carton Intercontinental Hotel, Cannes, France

2015 Over 3,500 immigrants over 2 days attempt to enter the Channel Tunnel at Calais, to cross into Britian

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July 28

1851 Total solar eclipse captured on a daguerreotype photograph

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

1866 Metric system becomes a legal measurement system in US

1893 A petition organised by Kate Sheppard, demanding women’s suffrage, is delivered to the New Zealand parliament; signed by more 25,000 women, a 5th of the adult European female population led by Kate Sheppard

1900 Hamburger created by Louis Lassing in Connecticut

1938 34,000-ton Cunard-White Star liner Mauretania launched at Birkenhead

1943 US President FDR announces end of coffee rationing in US

1951 Walt Disney’s animated musical film “Alice In Wonderland” released

1959 United Kingdom starts using postal codes

1986 NASA releases transcript from doomed Challenger, pilot Michael Smith could be heard saying, “Uh-oh!” as spacecraft disintegrated

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July 27

1501 Copernicus formally installed as canon of Frauenberg Cathedral

1836 Adelaide, South Australia, founded

1880 A P Abourne patents a process for refining coconut oil

1909 Orville Wright tests first US Army airplane, flying 1h12m40s

1920 Radio compass used for first time for aircraft navigation

1921 Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolate insulin at the University of Toronto

1960 US Vice-president Richard Nixon nominated for presidential candidate at Republican convention in Chicago

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

1977 John Lennon is granted a green card for permanent residence in US

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

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July 26

1579 Francis Drake leaves San Francisco to cross Pacific Ocean

1656 Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn declares he is insolvent

1775 United States Post Office (U.S.P.O.) created in Philadelphia under Benjamin Franklin

1803 The Surrey Iron Railway, arguably the world’s first public railway, opens in south London.

1865 The capital of New Zealand moves from Auckland to Wellington

1916 The US Protests the ‘Blacklist’ issued by the British forbidding trade with some 30 US firms

1945 Physicist Raemer Schreiber and Lieutenant Colonel Peer de Silva depart Kirtland Army Air Field to transport the plutonium core for the Fat Man bomb (bombing of Nagasaki) to the island of Tinian where the bomb is assembled

1952 King Farouk I of Egypt abdicates [Black Saturday]

1963 The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development votes to admit Japan.

1992 Britain honours her dead in the Falklands War

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July 25

1547 Henry II of France is crowned.

1758 Seven Years’ War: the island battery at Fortress Louisbourg in Nova Scotia is silenced and all French warships are destroyed or taken.

1795 The first stone of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct is laid.

1822 General Agustin de Iturbide crowned Agustin I, 1st Emperor of Mexico

1853 Joaquin Murietta, the famous Californian bandit known as “Robin Hood of El Dorado”, is killed.

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

1944 World War II: Operation Spring – one of Canada’s bloodiest days, 18,444 casualties and 5,021 killed

1946 At Club 500 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis stage their first show as a comedy team.

1969 1st performance of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (Fillmore East, NY)

1978 Louise Brown, the world’s first test tube baby is born at Oldham General Hospital in England

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July 24

1411 Battle of Harlaw, one of the bloodiest battles in Scotland, takes place.

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

1905 Tsar Nicholas II (Russia) and Emperor Wilhelm II (Germany) sign the Björkö Treaty, whereby each country agrees to come to the other’s defense if attacked by European powers

1911 American explorer Hiram Bingham discovers Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas

1938 Instant coffee invented

1959 US VP Nixon argues with Khrushchev, known as “Kitchen Debate”

1985 French DGSE officers Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart are arrested and charged with murder over the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior

2001 Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last Tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, is sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, becoming the first monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office.

2002 On 200th anniversary of his birth French author Alexandre Dumas’ (‘The Three Musketeers’) ashes are interred in the Panthéon in Paris in a televised ceremony.

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July 23
1599 Caravaggio’s first public commission for paintings

1798 Napoleon captures Alexandria, Egypt

1827 First US swimming school opens (Boston Mass)

1888 John Boyd Dunlop applies to patent pneumatic tire

1930 Earthquake strikes Ariano Italy, 1,500 killed

1937 Isolation of pituitary hormone announced (Yale University)

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

1995 Comet Hale-Bopp is discovered and becomes visible to the naked eye nearly a year later

2014 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow holds its opening ceremony

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

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July 22

1099 First Crusade: Godfrey of Bouillon is elected the first Defender of the Holy Sepulchre of The Kingdom of Jerusalem.

1632 Foundation laid in Madrid for Buen Retiro-palace for king Philip IV

1775 George Washington takes command of the Continental Army

1972 Venera 8 makes soft landing on Venus

1983 Dick Smith makes 1st solo helicopter flight around the world

1992 Colombia drug lord Pablo Escobar escapes prison

1997 Fire breaks out at Palais de Chaillot in Paris

1999 Woodstock 99 music festival begins Griffiss Park, Rome NY (till 25th) attended by 200,000.

2011 Norway is the victim of twin terror attacks, the first a bomb blast targeting government buildings in central Oslo, second a massacre at a youth camp on island of Utøya

2015 ‘Oldest’ Qur’an fragments discovered in collection of Birmingham University, radiocarbon testing dates to AD568 – AD645

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July 21

356 BC Herostratus sets fire to the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

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

1865 In the market square of Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok shoots and kills Davis Tutt in what is regarded as the first true western showdown.

1866 Cholera epidemic kills hundreds in London

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

1955 USS Seawolf launched, first submarine powered by liquid metal cooled nuclear reactor

1960 In Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) Sirima Bandaranaike is world’s first woman PM

1969 Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to step on the Moon at 2:56:15 AM (GMT)

1978 World’s strongest dog, 80-kg St Bernard, pulls 2909-kg load 27 m

2013 100th Tour de France won by Chris Froome of Great Britain

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July 20

1304 Wars of Scottish Independence: Fall of Stirling Castle – King Edward I of England takes the last rebel stronghold of the war.

1712 The Riot Act takes effect in Great Britain.

1837 Euston railway station opens in London as the terminus of the London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR), the city’s 1st intercity railway station

1917 Pact of Corfu signed: Serbs, Croats & Slovenes form Yugoslavia

1926 A convention of the Methodist Church votes to allow women to become priests.

1951 King Abdullah I of Jordan is assassinated by a Palestinian while attending Friday prayers in Jerusalem.

1960 USSR recovered two dogs; first living organisms to return from space

1963 Riots break out at Mt Eden Prison, Auckland, New Zealand

1969 1st Moon Landing: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from Apollo 11, 530 million watch live global broadcast

1985 Divers find wreck of Spanish galleon Atocha

2001 The London Stock Exchange goes public.

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

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July 19

1524 Peasants’ War begins in Germany’s Black Forest

1545 King Henry VIII’s flagship Mary Rose sinks at Portsmouth; 73 die

1553 15-year-old Lady Jane Grey deposed as England’s Queen after nine days

1595 Astronomer Johannes Kepler has an epiphany and develops his theory of the geometrical basis of the universe

1843 Brunel’s steamship the SS Great Britain is launched, becomes first ocean-going craft with an iron hull or screw propeller and the largest vessel afloat in the world

1903 First Tour de France won by Maurice Garin of France

1955 Yarkon Water Project opens to supply water to Negev desert in Israel

1969 Apollo 11 goes into Moon orbit

1983 The first three-dimensional reconstruction of a human head in a CT is published.

2001 Michael Brunet discovers the skull of Sahelanthropus tchadensis, thought to be the oldest known species in the human family tree, in the Djurab Desert, Chad. It lived 6-7 million years ago, about the same time as the last common ancestor to apes and humans.

2015 World Health Organisation puts world’s Ebola death toll at 11,284

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July 18

64 Great Fire of Rome begins under the Emperor Nero

1334 The bishop of Florence blesses the first foundation stone for the new campanile (bell tower) of the Florence Cathedral, designed by the artist Giotto di Bondone.

1853 Completion of Grand Trunk Line, trains begin running over 1st North American railroad between Portland, Maine & Montreal

1872 The Ballot Act introduces the secret ballot in elections in Britain; previously votes were made openly.

1925 Adolf Hitler publishes Mein Kampf (original title was the “Four and a Half Years (of Struggle) Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice”)

1986 Videotapes released showing Titanic’s sunken remains

1994 Crayola announces introduction of scented crayons

1995 “Dreams from My Father”, a memoir by Barack Obama is published by Times Books

2012 Kim Jong-un is officially appointed Supreme Leader of North Korea and given the rank of Marshal in the Korean People’s Army

2015 “The Sun” newspaper in Britain controversially publishes old picture and video of Queen Elizabeth giving Nazi salute in 1933

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July 17

1054 Emperor Henry III crowns his son Henry IV king

1717 George Frideric Handel’s “Water Music” premieres on the river Thames in London

1762 Catherine II becomes tsarina of Russia upon the murder of Peter III

1863 Māori forces are defeated by British troops at Koheroa, Waikato, in the New Zealand Wars between Maori tribes and British colonials

1902 Lord Tennyson, son of the poet, is named to succeed Lord Hopetown, first governor general of Australia

1917 Royal Proclamation by King George V changes name of British Royal family from German Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor

1955 Disneyland televises its grand opening in Anaheim, California.

1976 21st modern Olympic games opens in Montreal: 25 African teams (later rising to 33 nations) boycott the games due to New Zealand playing rugby in apartheid South Africa

1988 4 Billion tv-viewers watch Mandela’s 70th Birthday Tribute

1998 Russia buries Tsar Nicholas II & family, 80 years after they died

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July 16
1429 French Army and Joan of Arc enter Reims

1845 NY Yacht Club holds its 1st regatta

1926 National Geographic takes first natural-colour undersea photos

1951 King Leopold III, of Belgium, abdicates

1951 Novel “Catcher in Rye” by J. D. Salinger published by Little Brown and Company

1956 Last Ringling Bros, Barnum & Bailey Circus under a canvas tent

1965 Mount Blanc Road tunnel between France & Italy open

1969 Apollo 11, carrying 1st men to land on Moon, launched

1979 Premier/pres al-Bakr of Iraq is succeeded by Saddam Hussein

1990 NYC’s Empire State Building catches fire

1999 John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette are killed in a plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The Piper Saratoga aircraft was piloted by Kennedy.

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July 15

1099 City of Jerusalem is captured and plundered by Christian forces during the First Crusade

1381 John Ball, a leader in the Peasants’ Revolt, is hung, drawn and quartered in the presence of Richard II of England.

1662 King Charles II charters Royal Society in London

1795 “Marseillaise” becomes French national anthem

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

1869 Margarine is patented by Hippolye Méga-Mouriès for use by French Navy

1898 Camillo Golgi discovers the Golgi Apparatus (a delicate network inside cells essential for the transmission and reception of information between cells)

1934 Continental Airlines commences operations.

1941 Florey & Heatley present freeze dried mold cultures (Penicillin)

1948 Alcoholic Anonymous founded in Britain

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July 14

1682 Henry Purcell appointed organist of Chapel Royal, London

1789 Bastille Day-French Revolution begins with the fall of Bastille

1853 New Zealand holds its first general election

1946 Dr Benjamin Spock’s “Common Sense Book of Baby & Child Care” published

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

1969 A 67-year-old Catholic civilian dies after being attacked by RUC officers in Dungiven; many consider this the first death of ‘the Troubles’

1992 386BSD is released by Lynne Jolitz and William Jolitz, starting the open source operating system revolution. Linus Torvalds release “Linux” soon afterwards.

2014 The Church of England votes in favor of allowing women to become bishops

2014 The death toll from the West African Ebola outbreak passes 500

2015 Scientists from the Large Hadron Collider announce the discovery of a new particle called the pentaquark

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July 13

1568 Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral perfects a way to bottle beer

1645 Aleksei Romanov succeeds his father Michael as Tsar of Russia

1772 Captain James Cook begins his second voyage aboard the Resolution to the South Seas to search for Terra Australis (Southern continent)

1832 Source of Mississippi River discovered by American geographer Henry Schoolcraft

1837 Queen Victoria is the first monarch to live in present Buckingham Palace

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

1939 Frank Sinatra makes his recording debut

1955 The last execution of a woman in Britain, Ruth Ellis, takes place at Holloway Prison, London.

1985 “Live Aid” concert held both at Wembley Stadium (London) and John F. Kennedy Stadium (Philadelphia) raises over $70 million for African famine relief

2014 FIFA World Cup Awards: Lionel Messi (golden ball), James Rodriguez (golden boot) and Manuel Neuer (Golden gloves)

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July 12

1191 English King Richard I / the Lionheart & Crusaders defeat Saracens in Palestine

1580 Ostrog Bible, the first printed Bible in a Slavic language, is published.

1630 New Amsterdam’s governor buys Gull Island from Indians for cargo, renames it Oyster Island, it is later known as Ellis Island

1863 In New Zealand, British forces invade Waikato, home of the Maori King Movement, beginning a new phase of the wars between Maori and Colonial British

1902 Australian parliament agrees to female suffrage

1928 First televised tennis match

1957 US Surgeon General Leroy Burney connects smoking with lung cancer

1970 Thor Heyerdahl crosses Atlantic on raft Ra II, arrives in Barbados from Morocco in 57 days

1998 Pres. Nelson Mandela accompanies Queen Elizabeth II on a coach drive through the streets of London

2013 Malala Yousafzai addresses the United Nations and calls for worldwide access to education

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July 11

1302 Battle of the Golden Spurs (Guldensporenslag in Dutch) near Kortrijk, Belgium. Flemish coalition defeat French army

1533 Pope Clement VII excommunicates England’s King Henry VIII

1735 Mathematical calculations suggest that it was on this day that Pluto moved from the ninth to the eighth most distant planet from the Sun for the last time before 1979.

1801 French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons discovers his first comet

1811 Italian scientist Amedeo Avogadro publishes his memoir about molecular content of gases.

1848 London’s Waterloo Station opens

1877 Kate Edger becomes New Zealand’s first woman graduate and the first woman in the British Empire to earn a Bachelor of Arts

1900 Charlotte Cooper beats Hélène Prévost to become the 1st female Olympic tennis champion and the 1st individual female Olympic champion in any sport

1960 “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee is first published by J. B. Lippincott & Co.

1983 Lorraine Elizabeth Downes, 19, of NZ, crowned 32nd Miss Universe

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July 10

988 The city of Dublin is founded on the banks of the river Liffey

1040 Lady Godiva rides naked on horseback through Coventry, according to legend, to force her husband, the Earl of Mercia, to lower taxes

1460 Wars of Roses: Richard of York defeats King Henry VI at Northampton

1762 Louis-François Roubiliac’s monument to George Frideric Handel is unveiled at Westminster Abbey in London

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

1969 Chilean Association of Librarians created

1980 Alexandra Palace burnt down for a second time.

1985 French agents blow up Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, New Zealand

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

2011 British tabloid News of the World publishes its last edition after 168 years in the wake of a phone hacking scandal.

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July 09

1357 Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor assists laying the foundation stone of Charles Bridge in Prague.

1553 Lady Jane Grey, daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, is proclaimed queen of England in succession to Edward VI, who died three days earlier having proclaimed both his half-sisters illegitimate. She reigned for nine days before being deposed by Mary Tudor, who had Jane executed the following February.

1807 Treaties of Tilsit signed by Napoleon I and Alexander I.

1877 First ever Wimbledon tennis championship begins – first offical lawn tennis tournament – men’s singles only

1893 Daniel Williams performs first successful open heart surgery without anesthesia

1900 The Commonwealth of Australia is established by the British House of Commons

1917 British battleship Vanguard explodes at Scapa Flow (the result of an internal explosion of faulty cordite), killing 804

1947 Engagement of Britain’s Princess Elizabeth & Lt Philip Mountbatten

1951 US President Harry Truman asks Congress to formally end state of war with Germany

1991 South Africa readmitted to Olympics

1997 Mike Tyson is banned from boxing for biting Evander Holyfield’s ear

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July 08

1497 Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama departs on his first voyage – becomes first European to reach India by sea

1776 Col John Nixon gave first public reading of Decaration of Independence (Philadelphia)

1800 Dr Benjamin Waterhouse gives first cowpox vaccination in the US to his son to prevent smallpox

1944 Japanese kamakize attacks on US lines at Saipan

1947 Reports are broadcast that a UFO has crashed landed in Roswell, New Mexico.

1948 500th anniversary of the Russian Orthodox Church celebrated in Moscow

1963 US bans all monetary transactions with Cuba

1988 Stevie Wonder announces he will run for mayor of Detroit in 1992

2011 Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched in the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program.

2014 FIFA World Cup: Germany defeat Brazil by a record 7-1 in the semi-finals to make it to the final; Miroslav Klose of Germany breaks the World Cup goal scoring record with 16 goals.

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July 07

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

1550 Traditional date Chocolate thought to have been introduced to Europe

1668 Isaac Newton receives MA from Trinity College, Cambridge

1916 The New Zealand Labour party is formed

1928 Sliced bread sold for the first time by the Chillicothe Baking Company, Missouri. Described as the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.

1974 New Zealand imposes a blanket ban on sports teams from South Africa

1996 Nelson Mandela steps down as President of South Africa

2005 Coordinated terrorist bomb blasts strike London’s public transport system during the morning rush hour killing 52 and injuring 700

2005 Influenced by Live 8, the G8 leaders pledge to double 2004 levels of aid to Africa from US$25 to US$50 billion by the year 2010.

2007 Pope Benedict XVI issues the Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum, removing restrictions on celebrating the old Tridentine Mass.

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July 06

1189 Richard the Lionheart is crowned King of England.

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

1699 Pirate Capt William Kidd is captured in Boston

1776 American Declaration of Independence announced on front page of “PA Evening Gazette”

1858 Lyman Blake patents shoe manufacturing machine

1885 Louis Pasteur successfully tests an anti-rabies vaccine

1886 Horlick’s of Wisconsin offers 1st malted milk to public

1923 Rail crash on New Zealand’s main trunk line; 17 killed and 28 injured

1942 Anne Frank’s family goes into hiding in After House, Amsterdam

1957 John Lennon (16) & Paul McCartney (15) meet for 1st time as Lennon’s rock group Quarrymen perform at a church dinner

1988 North Sea oil platform Piper Alpha explodes, 166 die

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July 05

1295 Scotland and France form an alliance, the beginnings of the Auld Alliance, against England.

1687 Isaac Newton’s great work PRINCIPIA published by Royal Society in England. Outlines his laws of motion and universal gravitation.

1841 Thomas Cook opens first travel agency

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

1946 75th British Golf Open: Sam Snead shoots a 290 at St Andrews

1954 The BBC broadcasts its first television news bulletin.

1968 John Lennon sells his psychedelic painted Rolls-Royce

1973 Isle of Man begins issuing its own postage stamps

1985 Premier Robert Mugabe wins Zimbabwe elections

2012 The Shard, the tallest building in Europe, is opened in London, at 309.6 metres (1,016 ft)

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July 04

993 Saint Ulrich of Augsburg is canonized.

1653 English Barebones Parliament goes into session

1776 US Congress proclaims the Declaration of Independence and independence from Britain

1862 Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) creates Alice in Wonderland for Alice Liddell on a family boat trip on the river Isis (Thames) in Oxford

1868 In New Zealand, Maori leader Te Kooti and 300 of his followers captured the schooner Rifleman and sailed for New Zealand; the fugitives landed at Whareongaonga six days later

1960 America’s new 50-star flag honoring Hawaiian statehood unfurled

1996 Hotmail, a free internet E-mail service begins

2004 The cornerstone of the Freedom Tower is laid on the site of the World Trade Centre in New York City. (This was largely a symbolic event; actual construction would not start for several weeks)

2009 The Statue of Liberty’s crown reopens to the public after 8 years, due to security reasons following the World Trade Centre attacks.

2015 Unesco grants World Heritage Status to vineyards in Champagne, France along with Singapore’s Botanical Gardens, Diyarbakir Fortress (Turkey) and Maymand Caves (Iran)

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July 03

324 Battle of Adrianople: Roman Emperor Constantine I defeats his co-emperor Licinius, who flees to Byzantium

1608 Samuel de Champlain founds city of Quebec

1661 Portugal gives Tangier & Bombay to English King Charles II

1754 George Washington surrenders to French, Fort Necessity (7 Years’ War)

1767 Pitcairn Island is discovered by Midshipman Robert Pitcairn on an expeditionary voyage commanded by Philip Carteret.

1767 Norway’s oldest newspaper still in print, Adresseavisen, publishes first edition

1913 Common tern banded in Maine; found dead in 1919 in Africa (first bird known to have crossed the Atlantic)

1963 In New Zealand, a National Airways Corporation Dakota DC-3 crashes in the Kaimai Ranges; all 23 passengers and crew are killed in what is still New Zealand’s worst internal civil aviation accident

1986 President Reagan presided over relighting of renovated Statue of Liberty

1996 British House of Commons annouces Stone of Scone, used in the coronation of Scottish and British monarchs, will be returned to Scotland after 600 years

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July 02

706 Remains of Chinese Emperor Gaozong, his wife Empress Wu Zetian and family members interred in Qianling Mausoleum by Emperor Zhongzong, outside Chang’an on Mount Liangshan

1687 King James II disbands English parliament

1850 Benjamin Lane patents gas mask with a breathing apparatus

1865 One-time Methodist Reform Church minister William Booth and his wife Catherine found the Salvation Army (Army of the Salvation) as the East London Christian Mission

1901 Butch Cassidy & Sundance Kid rob train of $40,000 at Wagner, Montana

1937 Amelia Earhart & Fred Noonan disappear over Pacific Ocean

1940 Hitler orders invasion of Britain (Operation Sealion)

1956 Elvis Presley records “Hound Dog” & “Don’t Be Cruel”

2000 Vicente Fox Quesada is elected the first President of México from an opposition party, the Partido Acción Nacional after more than 70 years of continuous rule by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional.

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

2015 BP agrees to compensate US government & gulf states $18.7 billion for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill

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July 01

70 Roman General Titus and his forces set up battering rams to assault the walls of Jerusalem

1689 Matsuo Basho, zen poet, leaves for 150 days journey on Honshu Japan

1776 1st vote on Declaration of Independence for Britain’s North American colonies

1816 French frigate Medusa wrecked; basis of Géricault’s painting “Raft of the Medusa”

1862 The Russian State Library is founded.

1871 The decimal currency system is made uniform in Canada

1905 Albert Einstein introduces his theory of relativity

1916 Coca-Cola brings current coke formula to the market

1916 First day of the Battle of the Somme: the British Army suffers its worst day, losing 19,240 men (WWI)

1929 US cartoonist Elzie Segar creates “Popeye”

1979 Sony introduces the Walkman.

1988 In New Zealand, Bastion Point land returned to the local Maori iwi (tribe), Ngāti Whātua