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July
in History
July
1, 1751
- The first volume of Diderot's Encyclopédie was published in Paris.
July
1, 1837
- Compulsory registration of Births, Marriages & Deaths in England & Wales
began. For genealogists, this is a landmark date. Previously there were
only Parish Registers, which dated back to 1531, although many of these
records have been lost. Under the B, M & D Act, Registration Districts
were formed covering several parishes.
July
1, 1838
- Charles Darwin presented a paper to the Linnaean Society in London, on
his theory of the evolution of species.
July 1
-
Canada Day, a national holiday in Canada, formerly known as Dominion Day,
commemorates the confederation of Upper and Lower Canada and some of the
Maritime Provinces into the Dominion of Canada on July 1, 1867.
July
1, 1862
-
President Abraham Lincoln signed the first income tax bill, levying a 3%
income tax on annual incomes of $600-$10,000 and a 5% tax on incomes over
$10,000. Also on this day, the Bureau of Internal Revenue was established
by an Act of Congress.
July
1, 1863
- Beginning of the Battle of Gettysburg during the U.S. Civil War.
July
1, 1893
- President Grover Cleveland underwent secret cancer surgery aboard a
yacht owned by his friend, Commodore E.C. Benedict. The surgery was
performed on a cancerous growth in his mouth. The entire left side of his
jaw was removed along with a small portion of his soft palate. A second,
smaller operation was performed on July 17. Cleveland was then fitted with
a rubber prosthesis which he wore until his death in 1908. The secrecy was
intended to prevent panic among the public during the economic depression
of 1893.
July
2, 1759
- 16 New Jersey soldiers were surprised while gathering firewood near Lake
George by a force of close to 240 Indians, who killed and scalped half a
dozen soldiers. They taunted the rest of the Army before escaping in their
canoes.
July
2, 1776
- The Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopted the following
resolution, originally introduced on June 7, by Richard Henry Lee of
Virginia -- "Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought
to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all
allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between
them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally
dissolved. That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual
measures for forming foreign Alliances. That a plan of confederation be
prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their
consideration and approbation."
July
2, 1788
- Congress announced the United States Constitution had been ratified by
the required nine states and that a committee had been appointed to make
preparations for the new American government.
July
2, 1800
- Parliamentary union of Great Britain and Ireland, becoming "The United
Kingdom".
July
2, 1881
- President James A. Garfield was shot and mortally wounded as he entered
a railway station in Washington D.C. He died on September 19.
July
2, 1917
- A race riot occurred in St. Louis, Missouri, resulting in an estimated
75 African Americans killed and hundreds injured. To protest the violence
against blacks, W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson later led a silent
march down Fifth Avenue in New York.
July
2, 1964
- President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race in public accommodations,
publicly owned or operated facilities, employment and union membership and
in voter registration. The Act allowed for cutoff of Federal funds in
places where discrimination remained.
July
3, 1608
- French explorer Samuel Champlain founded Québec.
July
3, 1775
- During the American Revolution, George Washington took command of the
Continental Army at Cambridge, Massachusetts.
July
3, 1778
- The Wyoming Valley Massacre PA. While Washington's army was stationed
outside of New York, the frontier became the new stage for battle. One of
the bloodiest was the "Wyoming Valley Massacre," where a band of Tories
and Iroquois slaughtered and tortured hundreds of American settlers in
western Pennsylvania.
July
3, 1976
- The raid on Entebbe airport in Uganda occurred as an Israeli commando
unit rescued 103 hostages on a hijacked Air France airliner. The jet had
been en route from Tel Aviv to Paris when it was hijacked by
pro-Palestinian guerrillas. Three hostages, seven hijackers and twenty
Ugandan soldiers were killed during the rescue.
July
3, 1988
- Iran Air Flight 655 was destroyed while flying over the Persian Gulf
after the U.S. Navy Warship Vincennes fired two surface-to-air
missiles, killing all 290 passengers aboard. A subsequent U.S. military
inquiry cited stress related human failure for the mistaken identification
of the civilian airbus as an enemy F-14 fighter.
July
4, 1776
- The Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental
Congress.
July
4, 1802
- The United States Military Academy officially opened at West Point NY.
July
4, 1826
- 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was adopted,
former presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died. Each believed
the other had outlived them. They had been friends, enemies then friends
again before they died. Adams died in his armchair at his home - now the
Adams NHS in Quincy.
July
4, 1828
- The groundbreaking for the Chesapeake & Ohio canal took place, with
President John Quincy Adams ceremonially turning the first spade full of
earth. Ironically, this was also the same day as the groundbreaking for
its rival, the B&O Railroad.
The
C&O Canal operated for 74 years with peak use in the 1870s of about 750
canal boats hauling 663,500 tons of freight: mostly coal, flour, iron, and
limestone. Today the ribbon site is the C&O National Historic Park.
July
4, 1829
- Britain's first regular scheduled bus service began running, between
Marylebone Road and the Bank of England, in London. It was called The
Omnibus (Latin for 'For All'), which was popularly shortened to 'the bus'.
July
4, 1831
- 'America' (My country, 'tis of thee), written by Samuel Francis Smith,
was first sung in public at Park Street Church in Boston.
July
4, 1863-
Vicksburg, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River,
surrendered to Gen. Grant and the Army of the West after a six week siege.
With the Union in control of the Mississippi, the Confederacy was
effectively split in two, cut off from its western allies.
July
4, 1882
- The "Last Great Buffalo Hunt" began on Indian reservation lands near
Hettinger, North Dakota as 2,000 Teton Sioux Indians in full hunting
regalia killed about 5,000 buffalo. By this time, most of the estimated
60-75 million buffalo in America had been killed by white hide hunters who
usually left the meat to rot. By 1883, the last of the free-ranging
buffalo were gone.
July
5, 1777
- The Continentals evacuated Fort Ticonderoga. They were to retake it
later.
July
5, 1865
- William Booth founded the Salvation Army in London.
July
6, 1777
- British forces captured Fort Ticonderoga.
July
6, 1885
- Louis Pasteur gave the first successful anti-rabies inoculation to a boy
who had been bitten by an infected dog.
July
7, 1898
- President William McKinley signed a resolution annexing Hawaii. In 1900,
Congress made Hawaii an incorporated territory of the U.S., which it
remained until becoming a state in 1959.
July
8, 1497
-
Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama left Lisbon for a voyage on which he
discovered the Cape route to India.
July
8, 1776
- The first public reading of the Declaration of Independence occurred as
Colonel John Nixon read it to an assembled crowd in Philadelphia.
July
8, 1853
- The
opening up of Japan. An expedition led by Commodore Matthew Perry arrived
in Yedo Bay, Japan, on a mission to seek diplomatic and trade relations
with the Japanese.
July 9, 1810 - Napoleon annexed Holland, making his brother, Louis,
its king.
July 10, 1900 - The Paris underground railway, the Metro, was opened.
July
10, 1943
- The Allied invasion of Italy began with an attack on the island of
Sicily. The British entry into Syracuse was the first Allied success in
Europe.
Gen.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
called the invasion as "the first page in the liberation of the European
Continent."
July
10, 1973
- The Bahamas gained their independence after 250 years as a British Crown
Colony.
July
10, 1991
- Boris Yeltsin took the oath of office, becoming the first popularly
elected president in Russia's thousand year history.
July
11, 1767
- John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, was born in
Braintree MA. The son of John Adams, JQ followed his father on his travels
abroad, learning the essentials of diplomacy from an early age.
July
11, 1780
- French troops arrived at Newport RI.
July
11, 1782
- Savannah was evacuated by British troops.
July
11, 1804
- At dawn, political antagonists and personal enemies Alexander Hamilton
and Aaron Burr met on the heights of Weehawken NJ, overlooking New York
City across the Hudson River, to settle their longstanding differences in
a duel. The participants fired their pistols in close succession. Burr's
shot met its target immediately, fatally wounding Hamilton and leading to
his death the following day. Burr escaped physically unharmed, but
politically ruined. This tragically extreme incident reflected the depth
of animosity aroused by the emergence of the political party system.
July
13, 1754
- George Washington surrendered his hastily-constructed Fort Necessity to
the French, leaving them in control of the Ohio Valley.
July
13, 1787
- Congress enacted the Northwest Ordinance establishing formal procedures
for transforming territories into states. It provided for the eventual
establishment of three to five states in the area north of the Ohio River,
to be considered equal with the original 13. The Ordinance included a Bill
of Rights that guaranteed freedom of religion, the right to trial by jury,
public education and a ban on slavery in the Northwest.
July
13, 1802
- 'Hot Wednesday'. London's temperature soared to 101°F in the shade!
July
13, 1863
- Deadly rioting against the Civil War military draft erupted in New York
City.
July
13, 1917
- Due to the onset of WWI against Kaiser Wilhelm, the British royal family
adopted the name "Windsor." It was not the only change: the royal
Battenberg family became Mountbatten; German Shepherd dogs were renamed
Alsatians.
July
14, 1789
- The Bastille was stormed by the citizens of Paris and razed to the
ground as the French Revolution began. 'Le quatorze juillet". The diary of
Louis XVI for 14 July 1789 contained just one word "Rien"…(nothing
happened).
July
14, 1791
- In England, the Birmingham riot occurred on the second anniversary of
the fall of the Bastille. Mob rule lasted for three days, targeting
controversial scientist and theologian Joseph Priestly's home and
laboratory as well as the homes of his friends. Priestly, who had
expressed support for the American and French revolutions, fled to London
with his family and later moved to America.
July
14,
1823 - During a visit to Britain, King Kamehameha II of Hawaii and
his queen died of measles.
July
14, 1867
- Alfred Nobel demonstrated dynamite for the first time at a quarry in
Redhill, Surrey.
July
15
- St Swithun's Day in Britain. British tradition holds that a rainy St
Swithun's Day will bring a rainy week. In America this tradition has been
replaced by Groundhog Day.
July
15, 1779
- The Battle of Stony Point NY. In retaliation for the massacres of the
previous year, the Americans stormed the British-held fort at Stony Point.
They captured the fort, forcing Clinton to abandon his hopes of another
New Jersey invasion. From here on in, the British focused their efforts
largely on the south.
July
16, 1661
- Europe's first banknotes were issued, by the Bank of Stockholm.
July
16, 1769
- The Mission San Diego de Alcala was founded, the first of California's
21 missions. Established by Father Junípero Serra, one of the main
objectives of the mission was to Christianize the local Yuma Indians.
Today the city is known as San Diego.
July
16, 1918
- The last tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, along with his entire family,
family doctor, servants, and even the pet dog, was murdered by Bolsheviks
at Ekaterinburg.
July
16, 1945
- The experimental atomic bomb "Fat Boy" was set off at 5:30 a.m. in the
New Mexican desert, creating a mushroom cloud rising 41,000 ft. The bomb
emitted heat three times the temperature of the interior of the sun and
wiped out all plant and animal life within a mile.
July
16, 1969
- The Apollo 11 Lunar landing mission began with liftoff from Kennedy
Space Center at 9:37 a.m.
July
16, 1999
- A small plane piloted by John F. Kennedy Jr. took off from Fairfield,
New Jersey, heading toward Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. His wife,
Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister Lauren were passengers on the 200
mile trip. The plane was expected to arrive about 10 p.m. but disappeared
off radar at 9:40 p.m. Five days later, July 21, following an extensive
search, the bodies were recovered from the plane wreckage in 116 feet of
water roughly 7 miles off Martha's Vineyard. The next day, following an
autopsy, the cremated remains of John F. Kennedy, 38, his wife Carolyn,
33, and her sister Lauren, 34, were scattered at sea from a U.S. Navy
ship, with family members present, not far from where the plane had
crashed.
July
17, 1453
- With the defeat of the English at the Battle of Castillon, the Hundred
Years' War between France and England came to an end.
July
17, 1996
- TWA Flight 800 departed Kennedy International Airport in New York bound
for Paris but exploded in mid-air 12 minutes after takeoff then crashed
into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Long Island. All 212 passengers
and 17 crew members on board the Boeing 747 were killed. The exact cause
of the disaster has not been determined, although investigators have ruled
out terrorism and know that the center fuel tank exploded.
July
18, 1936
- The Spanish Civil War started.
July
18, 1947
- President Harry Truman signed an Executive Order determining the line of
succession if the president becomes incapacitated or dies in office.
Following the vice president, the speaker of the house and president of
the Senate are next in succession. This became the 25th Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution, ratified on February 10, 1967.
July
19-20, 1848
- A women's rights convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York. Issues
discussed included voting rights, property rights and divorce. The
convention marked the beginning of an organized women's rights movement in
the U.S.
July
19, 1793
- Scots-born Canadian Alexander Mackenzie (1763-1820) was the first
explorer to find his way across the North American continent (excluding
Mexico). On 19th July he reached the West Coast, having crossed the
divide. The expedition was 13 years before Lewis and Clark: an expedition
that was backed by President Jefferson in light of the Mackenzie trek.
Mackenzie was knighted in 1802 by King George III for his distinguished
services to Great Britain.
July
19, 1799
- The Rosetta Stone was discovered near the Nile River. Made out of black
basalt, the odd-shaped stone was the key to the decipherment of
hieroglyphics, since the same text is written in three languages. Today
the stone is one of the most-visited artifacts in the British Museum in
London.
July
19, 1863
- During the U.S. Civil War, Union troops made a second attempt to capture
Fort Wagner near Charleston, South Carolina. The attack was led by the
54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, commanded by Col. Robert Gould Shaw,
who was killed along with half of the 600 men in the regiment. This battle
marked the first use of black Union troops in the war.
July
20, 1715
- The Riot Act took effect in England. If a dozen or more persons were
disturbing the peace, an authority was required to command silence and
read the following, "Our sovereign lord the king chargeth and commandeth
all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and
peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business,
upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George,
for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God save the king." Any
persons who failed to obey within one hour were to be arrested. Hence the
term “read them the riot act”.
July
20, 1969
- A global audience watched on television as Apollo 11 Astronaut Neil
Armstrong took his first step on the moon. As he stepped onto the moon's
surface he proclaimed, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for
mankind" - inadvertently omitting an "a" before "man" and slightly
changing the meaning.
July
21, 1798
- The Battle of the Pyramids took place, in which Napoleon, soon after his
invasion of Egypt, defeated an army of some 60,000 Mamelukes. Napoleon's
invasion was in the start of Europe's fascination with Egyptian art and
culture, and influenced the French Empire and English Regency design
styles.
July
21, 1898
- Guam
was ceded to the United States by Spain.
July
22, 1934
- Bank robber John
Dillinger (1902-1934) was shot and killed by FBI agents as he left
Chicago's Biograph Movie Theater after watching the film Manhattan
Melodrama starring Clark Gable and Myrna Loy. Dillinger was the first
criminal labeled by the FBI as "Public Enemy No. 1." After spending nine
years (1924-1933) in prison,
Dillinger
went on a deadly crime spree, traveling through the states of Indiana,
Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. He was reportedly betrayed
by the "Lady in Red."
July
23,
1637 - King Charles I handed over the American colony of
Massachusetts to Sir Fernando Gorges, one of the founders of the Council
of New England.
July
23, 1664
- Wealthy non-church members in Massachusetts were given the right to
vote. Previously only wealthy church members had the franchise.
July
23, 1952
- Egyptian army officers launched a revolution changing Egypt from a
monarchy to a republic.
July
24, 1701
- Antoine Laumet de la Mothe Cadillac founded a French settlement between
Lakes St. Clair and Erie. Located beside some straits, Cadillac
appropriately named the settlement Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit, since "detroit"
is French for straits. Today the city is known as Detroit (or "Motown"),
and one of its progeny is the Cadillac motorcar. Six decades after its
founding, the French lost control of the fort to the Crown Forces.
July
24, 1943
- During World War II in Europe, the Royal Air Force conducted Operation
Gomorrah, raiding Hamburg, while tossing bales of aluminum foil strips
overboard to cause German radar screens to see a blizzard of false echoes.
As a result, only twelve of 791 Allied bombers were shot down.
July
24, 1945
- At the conclusion of the Potsdam Conference in Germany, Churchill,
Truman and China's representatives issued a demand for unconditional
Japanese surrender. The Japanese, unaware the demand was backed up by an
atomic bomb, rejected the Potsdam Declaration on July 26.
July
25, 1898
- During the Spanish-American War, the U.S. invaded Puerto Rico, which was
then a Spanish colony. In 1917, Puerto Ricans became American citizens and
Puerto Rico became an unincorporated territory of the U.S. Partial
self-government was granted in 1947 allowing citizens to elect their own
governor. In 1951, Puerto Ricans wrote their own constitution and elected
a nonvoting commissioner to represent them in Washington.
July
25, 1909
- The world's first international overseas airplane flight was achieved by
Louis Bleriot in a small monoplane. After asking, "Where is England?" he
took off from France and landed in England near Dover, where he was
greeted by English police.
July
25, 1956
- The Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria sank after colliding with
the Swedish liner Stockholm on its way to New York. Nearby ships
came to the rescue, saving 1,634 people, including the captain and the
crew, before the ship went down.
July
26, 1775
- The Continental Congress established a postal system for the colonies
with Benjamin Franklin as the first Postmaster General.
July
26, 1803
- The Surrey Iron Railway (incorporated 1801) was opened on this day. It
was probably Britain's first railway. It was built from Wandsworth (on the
Thames, upstream from London) to Croydon by William Jessop, with a double
track, 8.5 miles long with a 1.5 mile branch, and cost about £7000 to
build.
July
26, 1944
- The U.S. Army began desegregating its training camp facilities. Black
platoons were then assigned to white companies in a first step toward
battlefield integration. However, the official order integrating the armed
forces didn't come until July 26, 1948, signed by President Harry Truman.
July
26, 1945
- The U.S. Cruiser Indianapolis arrived at Tinian Island in the Marianas
with an unassembled atomic bomb, met by scientists ready to complete the
assembly.
July
26, 1953
- The beginning of Fidel Castro's revolutionary "26th of July Movement."
In 1959, Castro led the rebellion that drove out dictator Fulgencio
Batista. Although he once declared that Cuba would never again be ruled by
a dictator, Castro's government became a Communist dictatorship.
July
27, 1586
- Sir Walter Raleigh returned to England from Virginia.
July
27, 1663
- British Parliament passed a second Navigation Act, requiring all goods
bound for the colonies be sent in British ships from British ports.
July
27, 1953
- The Korean War ended with the signing of an armistice by U.S. and North
Korean delegates at Panmunjom, Korea. The war had lasted just over three
years.
July
28, 1786
- The first potato arrived in Britain, brought from Colombia by Thomas
Harriot.
July
28, 1932
- The Bonus March eviction in Washington DC occurred as U.S. Army troops
under the command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower
and Major George S. Patton, attacked and burned the encampments of
unemployed World War I veterans. About 15,000 veterans had marched on
Washington, demanding payment of a war bonus they had been promised. After
two months' encampment in Washington's Anacostia Flats, forced eviction of
the bonus marchers by the U.S. Army was ordered by President Herbert
Hoover.
July
30, 1619
- A representative colonial assembly - the first in America - was held at
Jamestown, Virginia, under the new governor of the colony, Sir George
Yeardley.
July
30, 1729
- The city of Baltimore was founded.
July
30, 1975
-
Former Teamsters Union leader James Hoffa was last seen outside a
restaurant near Detroit, Michigan. His 13 year federal prison sentence had
been commuted by President Richard M. Nixon in 1971. On December 8, 1982,
seven years after his disappearance, an Oakland County judge declared
Hoffa officially dead.
July
31, 1498
- During his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus
arrived at the island of Trinidad.
July
31, 1776
- During the American Revolution, Francis Salvador became the first Jew to
die in the conflict. He had also been the first Jew elected to office in
colonial America, voted a member of the South Carolina Provincial Congress
in January of 1775.
July
31, 1777
- The Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old French nobleman, was made a
major-general in the American Continental Army.
July
31, 1790
- The U.S. Patent Office first opened its doors. The first U.S. patent was
issued to Samuel Hopkins of Vermont for a new method of making pearlash
and potash. The patent was signed by George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson.
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