July 16:

622: Beginning of the Islamic calendar

1054: Beginning of the East-West Schism as three Roman legates broke relations with the Eastern Church by placing a dubious Papal Bull of Excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

1228: Saint Francis of Assisi was canonized.

1377: Coronation of King Richard II of England.

1769: Dedication of the first Catholic mission in California, the Mission San Diego de Alcala which evolved into the city of San Diego.

1779: Brig. Gen. Anthony Wayne launched a daring attack against fortified British positions at Stony Point, NY, successfully taking the fortress from the British enabling the Americans to control the Hudson River. He earned the nickname "Mad" Anthony for is heroics, a name he carried proudly for the rest of his life.

1790: Congress declared Washington, D.C. to be the new capital of the United States.

1858: Bernadette Soubirous claimed to she saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in Lourdes, France, the last such apparition.

1862: David Farragut was promoted to rear admiral, the first officer in the U.S. Navy to hold admiral rank.

1862: Birthday of Ida B. Wells, American journalist and anti-lynching activist

1882: Death of Mary Todd Lincoln, First Lady of the U.S.

1887: Birthday of Shoeless Joe Jackson, American baseball player and manager

1907: Birthday of Barbara Stanwyck, American actress

1911: Birthday of Ginger Rogers, American actress, singer, and dancer

1931: Emperor Halie Selassie signed the first constitution of Ethiopia.

1935: The world's first parking meter was installed in Oklahoma City.

1941: Joe DIMaggio hit safely for the 56thconsecutive game, an MLB record that has yet to be broken.

1942: The collaborationist Vichy government in France ordered the mass arrest of over 13,000 Jews who were held in Paris before being deported to Auschwitz.

1943: Birthday of Jimmy Johnson, 2 time Super Bowl winning coach for the Dallas Cowboys

1945: First successful detonation of a nuclear device at the Trinity site near Alamogordo, New Mexico. This was the culmination of years of work by British & American scientists costing billions of dollars and based in part upon the scientific theories of Albert Einstein.

1945: Beginning of the Potsdam Conference: The Allies met to discuss the final stages of WWII. Pres. Truman met with Joseph Stalin for the first time.

1950: Chaplain-Medic Massacre: The North Korean Army massacred murdered 30 unarmed, critically wounded American soldiers and an unarmed chaplain.

1956: Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus closed their last "Big Tent" circus in Pittsburgh.

1965: The Mont Blanc tunnel connecting France and Italy in the Alps opened.

1968: Birthday of Barry Sanders, American football player

1969: Launch of Apollo 11, the first space flight to land a man on the surface of the moon.

1979: Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr resigned and was replaced by Saddam Hussein.

1989: Death of Herbert von Karajan, Austrian conductor and manager

1995: Amazon opened for business.

1999: John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife, and her sister died in a plane crash.

2019: Death of John Paul Stevens, American lawyer and jurist, Supreme Court Justice

July 17:

1203: Crusaders on the Fourth Crusade attacked Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire which the crusades had intended to defend.

1429: During the Hundred Years' War Charles VII of France was crowned king in Reims Cathedral, largely due to the efforts of Joan of Arc.

1717: King George I of Great Britain sailed down the River Thames with a barge of 50 musicians playing the premiere of the Water Musicby Georg Frederic Handel.

1762: Former Tsar Peter III of Russia was murdered, possibly with his wife's support. She replaced him as Catherine II, "the Great."

1790: Death of Adam Smith, Scottish economist and philosopher, the "Father of Capitalism"

1794: The 16 Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne were executed by the French Revolutionary government. 10 days later, the Reign of Terror ended.

1821: Spain ceded Florida to the U.S.

1899: Birthday of James Cagney, American actor

1902: Willis Carrier created the first air conditioner in Buffalo, New York.

1918: The Bolsheviks murdered former Tsar Nicholas II of Russia along with his entire family.

1936: The Spanish Civil War began with an Armed Forces rebellion against the recently elected Popular Front government.

1945: Beginning of the Potsdam Conference: The Allies met to discuss the final stages of WWII. Pres. Truman met with Joseph Stalin for the first time.

1954: Birthday of Angela Merkel, chemist and politician, Chancellor of Germany

1955: Disneyland opened to the public in Anaheim, California.

1959: Death of Billie Holiday, American jazz singer

1961: Death of Ty Cobb, American baseball player and manager

1967: Death of John Coltrane, American saxophonist and composer

1975: America's Apollo 18 docked with Soyuz 19 as an example of dtente in space.

1989: First flight of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber.

1996: TWA 747 Flight #800 exploded over Long Island shortly after takeoff from Kennedy International Airport killing all on board.

2009: Death of Walter Cronkite, American journalist

2014: The Russians shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight #17 over the Ukraine border.

Adam Smith holds a special spot.

Absolutely. He was one of the greatest advocates of human freedom ever.

July 18:

64: Rome burned. While Nero did not start the fire and probably did not fiddle during it, he did blame Christians for it and used it as an excuse for persecutions.

1290: King Edward I banishes all Jews from England.

1566: Death of Bartolome de las Casas, Spanish bishop and historian

1610: Death of Caravaggio, Italian painter

1721: Death of Jean-Antoine Watteau, French painter

1792: Death of American naval hero John Paul Jones

1817: Death of Jane Austen, English novelist

1863: The 54th Massachusetts, a famous black regiment (immortalized in the film Glory), led by Col. Robert Gould Shaw assaulted Fort Wagner in South Carolina resulting in a significant number of deaths including Shaw himself. They failed to take the fort but the black soldiers did demonstrate their bravery under fire.

1870: The First Vatican Council decreed the doctrine of papal infallibility.

1887: Death of Dorothea Dix, American social reformer and activist

1899: Death of Horatio Alger, American novelist and journalist

1909: Birthday of Andrei Gromyko, Belarusian-Russian economist and politician, Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs

1925: Adolf Hitler published his autobiographical Mein Kampf describing his twisted philosophy and the measures he planned to take when he gained power. The book was stunningly prophetic in that he set out to complete much of that agenda after he did gain power.

1927: Birthday of Kurt Masur, German conductor

1936: Beginning of the Spanish Civil War as a rebellion of military officers in Spanish Morocco spread to the mainland.

1940: Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated to an unprecedented 3rdterm as president. Before, no president had ever sought a 3rdterm, following the precedents set by George Washington.

1942: The German test flight of the Messerschmitt Me 262 using jet engines for the first time.

1947: Birthday of Steve Forbes, American publisher and politician

1969: Sen. Ted Kennedy drove his car off a bridge at Chappaquiddick on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts killing Mary Jo Kopechne and her unborn child. He escaped from the crash but inexplicably waited several hours to report the accident.

1976: Nadia Comaneci became the first person in the history of the Olympic games to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics.

1984: A crazed gunman opened fire on a McDonald's crowd in San Ysidro, California killing 21.

1986: Video of the Titanicwreckage at the bottom of the Atlantic was released to the public.

2005: Death of William Westmoreland, American general

2007: Death of Jerry Hadley, American tenor

2013: The government of the city of Detroit, Michigan filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history with up to $20 billion in debt.

July 19:

64: The Great Fire of Rome raged for 6 days and destroyed half the city. Nero blamed Christians and used it as an excuse to persecute them.

1545: The Tudor warship Mary Rosesank off of Portsmouth. The wreck was salvaged in 1982 and is now located at a museum there.

1553: Lady Jane Grey was deposed as Queen of England after sitting on the throne for only nine days.

1799: Soldiers in Napoleon's army discovered the Rosetta Stone which would enable Egyptologists to begin translating Ancient hieroglyphics.

1814: Birthday of Samuel Colt, American businessman, founder of Colt's Manufacturing Company

1834: Birthday of Edgar Degas, French painter, sculptor, and illustrator

1821: Coronation of King George IV of the United Kingdom.

1848: A women's rights convention began in Seneca Falls, New York, organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and attended by abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

1870: France declared war on Prussia inaugurating the Franco-Prussian War.

1900: The first line of the Paris Metro opened.

1922: Birthday of George McGovern, American lieutenant, historian, and politician

1943: American bombing of Rome.

1963: Joe Walker flew a North American X-15 to an altitude of 347,800 feet which qualifies as a spaceflight.

1965: Death of Syngman Rhee, South Korean journalist and politician, President of South Korea

1969: Sen. Edward Kennedy drove his car into a tidal pond at Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. He survived but his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne and her unborn child perished. He waited hours to report the incident.

1976: Birthday of Benedict Cumberbatch, English actor

1977: The world's first Global Positioning System (GPS) signal was transmitted from an NTS-2 satellite and received at Rockwell Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

1979: The Sandinistas rebelled and overthrew the Somoza government in Nicaragua.

July 20:

1304: Birthday of Petrarch, Italian poet and scholar

1591: Birthday of Anne Hutchinson, English Puritan preacher

1881: Sitting Bull surrendered to the U.S. Army.

1903: The Ford Motor Company shipped their first automobile.

1906: In Finland, a new electoral law made them the first country to have equal voting rights including women.

1938: Birthday of Diana Rigg, English actress

1938: Birthday of Natalie Wood, American actress

1944: The plot by German army officers led by Col. Claus von Stauffenberg to assassinate Adolf Hitler failed. The bomb planted in a briefcase exploded but the dictator survived.

1949: The last of 4 ceasefire agreements between Israel and their Arab neighbors was reached ending the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

1951: A Palestinian assassinated King Abdullah I of Jordan.

1960: Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) elected Sirimavo Bandaranaike Prime Minister, the world's first elected female head of government.

1969: Moonwalk: Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon, followed by Buzz Aldrin.

1973: Death of martial arts expert Bruce Lee.

1976: NASA's spacecraft Viking 1landed on Mars.

1977: Johnstown, Pennsylvania het by another great flood, this one killing 84 people.

1989: Burma's ruling military junta put opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.

1992: Vaclav Havel resigned as president of Czechoslovakia.

1997: The fully restored USS Constitution(Old Ironsides) celebrated its 200 birthday by setting sail for the first time in 116 years. She is the oldest active duty naval vessel in the world.

1999: The Chinese Communist Party began a persecution campaign against Falun Gong, arresting thousands across the country.

2012: A crazed gunman opened fire on a crowd in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado killing 12 including a 6 year old girl.

2015: Normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba.

2017: O.J. Simpson was paroled after serving 9 years of a 33 year sentence for armed robbery in Las Vegas.

An excerpt from an Eric Metaxas writing:

But what happened before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exited the Lunar Module is perhaps even more amazing. Some months after his return, he wrote about it in Guideposts Magazine. And a few years ago I had the privilege of meeting him myself. (See photo at the beginning of this email.) I asked him about it and he confirmed the story to me, and I wrote about in my book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid to Ask).

The background to the story is that Aldrin was an elder at his Presbyterian Church in Texas during this period in his life, and knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented in human history, he felt he should mark the occasion somehow, and he asked his pastor to help him. And so the pastor consecrated a communion wafer and a small vial of communion wine. And Buzz Aldrin took them with him out of the Earth's orbit and on to the surface of the moon.

He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a few minutes when Aldrin made the following public statement: "This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way." He then ended radio communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from home, he read a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took communion. Here is his own account of what happened:

"In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the Scripture, 'I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing.' I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute [they] had requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O'Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly.I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements."

And of course, it's interesting to think that some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of Jesus Christ, who made the Earth and the moon and Who, in the immortal words of Dante, is Himself the "Love that moves the Sun and other stars."

Thanks for sharing

July 21:

356 BC: The Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was destroyed by arson.

365: A powerful earthquake off the coast of Greece produced a tsunami that devastated Alexandria, Egypt killing aps 5,000. Modern scientists think that it was actually two quakes, the larger measuring about 8.0 on the Richter scale.

1831: Beginning of the reign of Leopold I, Belgium's first king.

1861: First Battle of Bull Run: The first major battle of the Civil War resulted in a Confederate victory, Gen. Thomas L. Jackson earning the nickname "Stonewall", and both sides' hopes of a short war dashed.

1873: Jesse James and his gang pulled off the first successful train robbery in the Old West at Adair, Iowa.

1899: Birthday of Ernest Hemingway, American novelist

1920:

1925: Scopes Monkey Trial: High School Biology teacher John T. Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution in violation of state law.

1944: Battle of Guam: The battle began with the landing of American forces on the island.

1944: Claus von Stauffenberg and 4 co-conspirators in the July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler were executed.

1946: Birthday of Ken Starr, American lawyer and judge, president of Baylor University

1948: Birthday of Gary Trudeau, American cartoonist

1949: The U.S. Senate ratified the North American Treaty which created NATO, the 3rdmilitary alliance in U.S. history.

1951: Birthday of Robin Williams, American actor, singer, and producer

1954: Geneva Accords: Vietnam was partitioned into two countries, North Vietnam & South Vietnam, at the Geneva Conference. The diplomats also agreed that elections would soon decide the fate of the country but they never did take place.

1970: Completion of the Aswan High Dam

1983: At Vostok Station in Antarctica, the temperature reached -128.6 F. This is the lowest temperature ever recorded in an inhabited place on earth.

1998: Death of Alan Shepard, American admiral, pilot, and astronaut

2004: Death of Jerry Goldsmith, American composer and conductor

2005: Islamofascist terrorists attempted to bomb the London subway system. Fortunately, none of the three bombs detonated.

2011: The Space Shuttle program came to end when Atlantis landed at the Kennedy Space Center.

July 22:

1298: King Edward I and his longbowmen defeated William Wallace and his Scottish schiltrons near the town of Falkirk.

1621: Birthday of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1stEarl of Shaftesbury, English politician, Lord Chancellor of the U.K., patron of John Locke, one of the Lords Proprietor who founded the colony of Charlestowne, Carolina (now Charleston), collaborated with Locke in drafting the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina

1706: The Acts of Union 1707 were agreed upon by the Kingdoms of England and Scotland. After both Parliaments passed it the Kingdom of Great Britain was established.

1793: Alexander Mackenzie reached the Pacific Ocean becoming the first human in history to complete a transcontinental crossing of North America.

1849: Birthday of Emma Lazarus, American poet and educator (her most famous poem is engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty)

1862: Pres. Abraham Lincoln discussed his plans to emancipate the slaves with his Cabinet.

1869: Death of John A. Roebling, German-American engineer, designer of the Brooklyn Bridge

1893: Katharine Lee bates wrote "America the Beautiful" after admiring the view from atop Pikes Peak near Colorado Springs, Colorado.

1894: The first ever motor race was held in France from Paris to Rouen.

1923: Birthday of Bob Dole, American soldier, lawyer and politician

1934: Notorious gangster John Dillinger, America's "Public Enemy #1", was shot to death in Chicago.

1937: The U.S. Senate rejected Pres. Franklin Roosevelt's Court Packing scheme, adding justices to the Supreme Court.

1940: Birthday of Alex Trebek, Canadian-American game show host and producer

1942: The Nazis began deporting Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp.

1943: Birthday of Kay Bailey Hutchison, American lawyer and politician

1977: Deng Xiaoping was restored to power as China's dictator.

1987: Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev announced his willingness to accept a ban on intermediate range nuclear missiles. Negotiations between the communist dictator and U.S. President Ronald Reagan eventually produced the IMF Treaty which did just that.

1991: Capture of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer

2003: Qusay and Uday Hussein, sons of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein were killed in a firefight with American forces.

2013: Kate Middleton, wife of Prince William, gave birth to their first child, Prince George.

July 23:

1862: Henry Halleck took command of the Union Army.

1885: Death of former general & president Ulysses S. Grant

1888: Birthday of Raymond Chandler, American crime novelist and screenwriter

1892: Birthday of Haile Selassie, Ethiopian emperor

1914: Weeks after the assassination of the hair to the Austrian throne, Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia with terms impossible to accept. Events would continue to spiral out of control leading to the outbreak of WWI.

1952: Gen. Gamal Abdal Nasser staged a military coup to overthrow the government of King Farouk.

1962: Jackie Robinson became the first black to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

1967: Riots began in Detroit.

1973: Death of Eddie Rickenbacker, American pilot and race car driver

1982: Three actors, including two children, were killed on the set while filming Twilight Zone: The Movie.

July 24:

1567: Mary Queen of Scots was deposed

1725: Birthday of John Newton, English sailor and priest, wrote hymn "Amazing Grace"

1783: Birthday of Simon Bolivar, Venezuelan commander and politician

1802: Birthday of Alexandre Dumas, French novelist and playwright

1847: Mormons, led by Brigham Young, settled in the Salt Lake Valley.

1862: Death of Martin Van Buren, American lawyer and politician, 8thPresident of the U.S.

1866: Tennessee became the first Confederate State readmitted to Congress after the Civil War, during Reconstruction

1874: Birthday of Oswald Chambers, Scottish minister and author

1897: Birthday of Amelia Earhart, American pilot and author

1901: William Sydney Porter, aka O. Henry, was released from prison where he had served a three year sentence for attempting to embezzle funds from a bank.

1911: American archaeologist Hiram Bingham discovered Machu Picchu, a settlement of the Incan civilization, in modern Peru.

1929: The Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, went into effect. It was meaningless because it had no means of enforcement. It did not nothing to stop the aggressions of Japan, Germany, & Italy.

1935: The Dust Bowl heat wave peaked with temperatures reaching 109 in Chicago and 104 in Milwaukee.

1943: Operation Gomorrah began: The British and Canadians bombed Hambur gat night while the Americans bombed the city during the day. By the time it ended in November, 9, 000 tons of explosives killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.

1959: "Kitchen Debate": Vice President Richard M. Nixon engaged in a spontaneous debate with Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev over the relative merits of communism vs. capitalism at the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow.

1969: Apollo 11safely returned to earth after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon.

1969: Birthday of Jennifer Lopez, American actress, singer, and dancer

1974: The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Pres. Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and they ordered him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.

1980: Death of Peter Sellers, English actor and comedian

2005: Lance Armstrong won his seventh Tour de France.

historian said:

---

July 24:

2005: Lance Armstrong won his seventh Tour de France.

---

Or did he?

The story of Amazing Grace's impact on John Newton

July 25:

306: Constantine I was proclaimed Roman emperor by his troops.

315: The Arch of Constantine was completed near the Colosseum in Rome to celebrate his victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge.

1137: Eleanor of Aquitaine married Prince Louis, later King Louis VII of France. She would later marry Henry II of England and have three sons, two of whom were King Richard I and King John. She is the only person in history to be wife to two kings and mother of two kings.

1261: The city of Constantinople was recaptured by Nicaean forces, re-establishing the Byzantine Empire.

1471: Death of Thomas a Kempis, German priest

1547: Coronation of Henry II of France

1564: Death of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor

1593: Henry IV of France publicly converted from Protestantism (he was a Huguenot) to Catholicism. This ended the civil wars in France and ensured for him a relatively stable reign. He also issued the Edict of Nantes granting the Huguenots religious toleration.

1603: James VI of Scotland was crowned King James I of England bringing personal union to the kingdoms of England and Scotland.

1609: The English ship Sea Venture, en route to Virginia, was deliberately grounded at Bermuda during a storm to avoid sinking. The survivors would eventually found a new colony there. This inspired William Shakespeare to write The Tempest.

1788: Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completed his Symphony #40 in G minor (K 550).

1832: First railroad accident in U.S. history took place in Quincy, Massachusetts when four people were thrown from the train and over a cliff, resulting in the death of one.

1834: Death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English philosopher, poet, and critic

1844: Birthday of Thomas Eakins, American painter, sculptor, and photographer

1848: Birthday of Arthur Balfour, Scottish-English army officer and politician, Prime Minister of the UK

1861: The U.S. Congress passed the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution, stating that the Civil War was being fought to preserve the Union, not free the slaves.

1868: The Wyoming Territory was established.

1869:

1894: Birthday of Gavrilo Princip, Bosnian Serb revolutionary, started WWI when he assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo

1897: Jack London set sail for the Klondike.

1898: During the Spanish-American War, U.S. forces invaded Puerto Rico facing little resistance and only seven deaths.

1906: Birthday of Johnny Hodges, American saxophonist and clarinet player

1915: Birthday of Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., American naval officer and pilot, JFK's older brother

1917: Exotic dancer Mata Hari was sentenced to death as a spy for the Germans.

1934: Nazis assassinated Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in a failed coup attempt.

1943: Benito Mussolini was removed from power by his own Grand Council.

1945: During the Potsdam Conference Pres. Harry S. Truman casually told Joseph Stalin about the successful detonation of the first atomic bomb. Stalin already knew about the Manhattan Project because of his spies in America.

1956: The Swedish liner Stockholmcollided with the Italian liner Andrea Doria during a foggy night. The Andrea Doriasank the next morning in a disaster that claimed 51 lives.

1969: Pres. Richard Nixon announced the Nixon Doctrine: America's Asian allies were responsible for their own defense.

1978: Birth of world's first "test tube" baby.

1994: Israel and Jordan signed the Washington Declaration formally ending the state of war between them that began in 1948.

2000: The supersonic jet Concorde crashed shortly after takeoff from Charles DeGaulle International Airport outside Paris killing all on board.

2010: WikiLeaks published classified documents about the War in Afghanistan.

July 26:

1775: The Second Continental Congress established the U.S. postal system with Benjamin Franklin as the first Postmaster General.

1788: New York became the 11thstate to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1847: The Republic of Liberia declared its independence, the first democratic republic in Africa. Liberia had been established by the American Colonization Society for the repatriation of former slaves.

1856: Birthday of George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright and critic

1863: Death of Sam Houston, American general and politician, 1st& 3rdPresident of the Republic of Texas, 7thGovernor of Texas

1875: Birthday of Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist

1882: Premier of the opera Parsifal by Richard Wagner at Bayreuth.

1894: Birthday of Aldus Huxley, English novelist and philosopher

1908: Attorney General Charles Bonaparte established the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

1922: Birthday of Blake Edwards, American film director, producer, and screenwriter

1925: Death of William Jennings Bryan, American lawyer and politician

1926: Death of Robert Todd Lincoln, American lawyer and politician, Secretary of State, son of Pres. Abraham Lincoln

1928: Birthday of Stanley Kubrick, American director, producer, screenwriter, and cinematographer

1936: Italy and Germany decided to intervene in the Spanish Civil War, supporting Francisco Francoand the Nationalists.

1939: Birthday of Bob Lilly, American football player and photographer

1943: Birthday of Mick Jagger

1945: The Potsdam Declaration was signed in Potsdam, Germany

1945: Winston Churchill resigned as prime minister of the Great Britain after his party lost an election to the Labour Party.

1945: Birthday of Helen Mirren, English actress

1947: Pres. Harry S. Truman signed into law the National Security Act, establishing much of the bureaucratic framework that would govern the early years of the Cold War. It created the CIA, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.

1948: Pres. Harry S. Truman signed an executive order to desegregate the U.S. armed forces.

1951: Premier of Walt Disney's 13thanimated film, Alice in Wonderland, in London.

1952: Death of Eva Peron, Argentinian politician

1953: Fidel Castro began the Cuban Revolution with an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks.

1956: Egyptian Pres. Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal because the World Bank refused to fund the Aswan Dam.

1964: Birthday of Sandra Bullock, American actress and producer

1971: Apollo 15was launched. It was the first Apollo mission to use a Lunar Roving Vehicle.

1977: The National Assembly of Quebec imposed the use of French as the official language of the provincial government.

1986: Death of W. Averell Harriman, American politician and diplomat, Secretary of Commerce

1990: Pres. George H.W. Bush signed into law the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

1993: Death of Matthew Ridgeway, American general

2005: In the space of 24 hours, Mumbai, India received 39.17 inches of rain resulting in flooding that killed over 5,000 people.

2016: Hillary Clinton became the first female nominee for President of the United States by a major political party at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

2020: Death of Olivia de Havilland, American actress

July 27:

1054: Siward, Earl of Northumbria, invaded Scotland and defeated Macbeth, King of Scotland.

1214: Philip II of France decisively defeated Imperial, English, and Flemish armies, effectively ending King John of England's Angevin Empire.

1549: A ship carrying Jesuit priest Francis Xavier arrived in Japan.

1663: Parliament passed the second Navigation Act requiring that all goods bound for American colonies had to be sent in English ships from English ports. After the 1707 Acts of Union, Scotland would be included. American colonists managed to evade these restrictions through smuggling which the British often ignored.

1694: A Royal charter was granted to the Bank of England.

1794: Maximilien Robespierre, leader of the Committee of Public Safety and of the Reign of Terror, was overthrown by the National Convention. After the execution of Georges Danton in April, other top leaders grew increasingly concerned by the radicalism and capriciousness of his dictatorship.

1824: Birthday of Alexandre Dumas, French novelist and playwright

1890: Vincent van Gogh shot himself, dying two days later.

1921: Scientists in Toronto successfully isolated insulin, a hormone key to treating diabetes.

1929: 53 nations signed the Geneva Convention of 1929 regulating the treatment of prisoners of war.

1940: The animated short A Wild Harewas released, introducing the character of Bugs Bunny.

1949: The maiden flight of the de Havilland Comet, the first jet-powered airliner.

1953: An armistice was signed ending the Korean War. There has never been a peace treaty.

1974: The House Judiciary Committee recommended that Pres. Richard M. Nixon be impeached for obstruction of justice during the Watergate investigation.

1996: A bomb went off at a free concert at Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park killing 1 during the 1996 Summer Olympics.

2003: Death of Bob Hope, English-American actor, comedian, and businessman

July 28:

450: Death of Theodosius II, Roman emperor

1540: Under the order of King Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell was executed on charges of treason. One of his "crimes": he had arranged Henry's marriage to his fourth wife who the king found unattractive.

1655: Death of Cyrano de Bergerac, French poet and playwright

1741: Death of Antonio Vivaldi, Italian violinist and composer

1750: Death of Johann Sebastian Bach, German organist and composer

1794: Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, two of the leading members of the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror, were executed by guillotine.

1821: Jose de San Martin declared the independence of Peru from Spain.

1854: Commissioning of the USS Constellation, the last all-sail warship built by the U.S. Navy.

1866: Birthday of Beatrix Potter, English children's book writer and illustrator

1868: Congress officially adopted the Fourteenth Amendment after its ratification by the states.

1896: Incorporation of the city of Miami, Florida.

1914: The Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia. Soon, the great powers of Europe would declare war on each other transforming a small regional conflict into the First World War.

1915: The United States began a 19 year occupation of Haiti.

1917: The Silent Parade took place in New York City as a protest against murders, lynchings, and other violence perpetrated against blacks.

1929: Birthday of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy

1932: Pres. Herbert Hoover sent the U.S. Army, commanded by Douglas MacArthur, to remove the Bonus Army Marchers who had encamped on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Destitute because of the Great Depression, these WWI veterans sought an early a financial bonus promised to them.

1935: First flight of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.

1942: Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin issued the order that all soldiers who retreated or left their positions without orders were to be tried in a military court with the potential of the death penalty.

1943: The Royal Air Force bombed Hamburg, Germany creating a firestorm that killed 42,000 civilians.

1945: A B-25 bomber got lost in the fog and crashed into the Empire State Building in New York City killing 14.

1945: Birthday of Jim Davis, American cartoonist, creator of Garfield

1954: Birthday of Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan officer and politician

1969: Death of Frank Loesser, American composer

2001: Australian Ian Thorpe became the first swimmer to win six gold medals at a single World Championship meeting.

2002: Nine coal miners were rescued after the trapped in a Pennsylvania mine for 77 hours.

July 29:

587 BC: The Neo-Babylonian Empire sacked Jerusalem and destroyed Solomon's Temple.

1588: English naval forces defeated the Spanish Armada in the English Channel.

1805: Birthday of Alexis de Tocqueville, French historian and philosopher

1833: Death of William Wilberforce, English philanthropist and politician, leader of fight against the slave trade

1836: The inauguration of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France.

1856: Death of Robert Schumann, German composer and critic

1883: Birthday of Benito Mussolini, Italian fascist revolutionary and politician, founder of the Fascist Party

1890: Death of Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter and illustrator

1900: An Italian-American anarchist assassinated King Umberto I of Italy.

1905: Birthday of Dag Hammarskjld, Swedish economist and diplomat, 2ndSecretary General of the United Nations

1909: General Motors purchased Cadillac, the nation's leading maker of luxury automobiles, for $4.5 million.

1914: Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany and Czar Nicholas II of Russia, cousins, exchanged telegrams in response to the worsening international situation in the Balkans.

1921: Adolf Hitler became the leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, the Nazis.

1953: Birthday of Ken Burns, American director and producer

1958: Congressed passed legislation to create NASA. This was done in response to the Soviets' successful launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, a few months earlier.

1972: Birthday of Will Wheaton, American actor, producer, and screenwriter

1973: Birthday of Stephen Dorff, American actor and producer

1976: In New York City, the "Son of Sam" (serial killer David Berkowitz), killed his first victim and seriously injured another.

1981: Prince Charles married Lady Diana with a global TV audience of over 700 million watching.

1987: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Franois Mitterrand of France signed an agreement to build a tunnel under the English Channel.

1993: Israel's Supreme Court acquitted alleged Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk of all charges and set him free.

Michael Johnson wins gold in the 400

LIB,MR BEARS said:

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Michael Johnson wins gold in the 400

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And a couple of days later, he.... well, you know!

I was there for both....

July 30:

762: Founding of Baghdad.

1419: First Defenestration of Prague: A crowd of radical Hussites killed seven members of the Prague city council.

1619: The first legislative assembly in the New World was convened in Jamestown, Virginia.

1676: Nathaniel Bacon issued his "Declaration of the People of Virginia" beginning Bacon's Rebellion against Gov. William Berkeley.

1718: Death of William Penn, English businessman and philosopher, founder Pennsylvania colony

1729: Baltimore, Maryland founded.

1818: Birthday of Emily Bront, English novelist and poet

1863: Birthday of Henry Ford, American engineer and businessman, found the Ford Motor Company

1864: Battle of the Crater: Union forces attempted to break Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia by exploding a large bomb under their trenches. The tactic failed.

1875: Death of George Pickett, Confederate general, commanded "Pickett's charge" during the Battle of Gettysburg

1898: Death of Otto von Bismarck, German lawyer and politician, 1stChancellor of the Second Reich which he created

1945: The USS Indianapolis was sunk by Japanese torpedoes in shark infested waters. Only 316 of 1,196 men survived. The ship had already completed its mission of delivering parts of the atomic bombs that would later be dropped on Japan.

1947: Birthday of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austrian-American bodybuilder, actor, and politician, governor of California

1956: Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law a bill that declared "In God We Trust" as the nation's official motto.

1961: Birthday of Laurence Fishburne, American actor and producer

1962: Official opening of the Trans-Canada Highway, the longest national highway in the world.

1965: Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Social Security Act of 1965 into law which created Medicare and Medicaid.

1970: Birthday of Christopher Nolan, English-American director, producer, and screenwriter

1970: Death of George Szell, Hungarian-American conductor and composer

1971: David Scott and James Irwin landed Apollo 15 on the Moon with the first Lunar Rover.

1974: Pres. Richard Nixon released subpoenaed recordings from inside the Oval Office after the Supreme Court ordered him to do so.

1975: Jimmy Hoffa disappeared from the parking lot of a restaurant in Michigan and has never been seen or heard since.

1976: Bruce Jenner won the decathlon in the Montreal Olympics.

2003: The last classic Volkswagon Beetle rolled off the assembly line in Puebla, Mexico. It was the 21,529,464thbeetle to be manufactured.

2020: Death of Herman Cain, American businessman and politician

July 31:

30 BC: Battle of Alexandria: Mark Antony achieved a minor victory over the forces of Octavian but most of his army deserted him and he later committed suicide.

781: The oldest recorded eruption of Mount Fuji.

1492: The Jews are expelled from Spain when the Alhambra Decree takes effect.

1498: During his third voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus became the first European to discover the island of Trinidad.

1556: Death of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order.

1588: The Spanish Armada was spotted off the coast of England.

1658: Aurangzeb was proclaimed Mughal emperor of India.

1703: Daniel Defoe was placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet but was pelted with flowers.

1715: A hurricane struck off the east coast of Florida, sinking 10 Spanish ships loaded with New World treasure and killing over 1,000.

1777: The Marquis de Lafayette accepted a commission in the Continental Army with the rank of major-general without pay.

1784: Death of Denis Diderot, French philosopher, compiler of the Encyclopedie

1790: The first U.S. patent was issued to Samuel Hopkins for a potash process.

1856: The city of Christchurch, New Zealand was chartered.

1874: Dr. Patrick Francis Healy became the first black president of a predominantly white university, Georgetown University.

1875: Death of Andrew Johnson, American general and politician, 17thPresident of the United States

1886: Death of Franz Liszt, Hungarian pianist, composer and conductor

1912: Birthday of Milton Friedman, American economist and academic

1917: The Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) began in Flanders, Belgium. The Allies launched yet another assault on German lines, a battle that would last for months and produce few resultsexcept massive casualties.

1932: The Nazi Party won more than 38% of the vote in German elections.

1938: Archaeologists discovered engraved gold and silver plates form King Darius the Great of Persia in Persepolis.

1941: Under instructions from Hitler, Hermann Goering wrote orders to Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler's immediate subordinate, to plan out what would become known as the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem, the Holocaust.

1941: The Battle of Smolensk ended with the Germans capturing 300,000 Red Army prisoners.

1943: Birthday of William Bennett, American journalist and politician

1945: Pierre Laval, the fugitive former leader of Vichy France surrendered to Allied forces in Austria.

1953: Death of Robert A. Taft, American soldier and politician

1958: Birthday of Mark Cuban, American businessman

1962: Birthday of Wesley Snipes, American actor

1964: NASA's unmanned spacecraft Ranger 7 took the first close range photographs of the moon.

1965: Birthday of J. K. Rowling, English author and film producer

1975: Labor organizer Jimmy Hoffa was reported missing. He has never been found since.

2006: Fidel Castro handed over power to his brother Raul.

2012: Michael Phelps broke the record for most medals won at the Olympics.

August 1:


30 BC: Octavian (later Augustus) entered Alexandria, Egypt bringing it under the control of the Roman Republic.

30 BC: Death of Mark Anthony, Roman general and politician

10 BC: Birthday of Claudius, Roman emperor

527: Justinian I became the sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire.

1457: Death of Lorenzo Valla, Italian author and educator

1498: Christopher Columbus landed in South America for the first time.

1714: Death of Anne, Queen of Great Britain

1714: George, Elector of Hanover, became King George Iof Great Britain. He did not speak English.

1800: The Acts of Union were passed merging Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom.

1801: During the First Barbary War, the American schooner USS Enterprisecaptured the Tripolitan polacca off the coast of modern Libya.

1809: Birthday of William B. Travis, American colonel and lawyer, commander of the Alamo

1819: Birthday of Herman Melville, American novelist, short story writer, and poet

1834: Slavery was abolished in the British Empire, although it remained legal in the possessions of the East India Company for another 10 years.

1876: Colorado was admitted as the 38thstate.

1914: Days after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, WWI began as Germany & Russia declared war on each other and German units crossed into Luxembourg as a prelude to an invasion of France.

1936: Opening ceremonies for the Berlin Olympics hosted by Adolf Hitler.

1943: PT-109 sank in the South Pacific. Lt. John F. Kennedy's leadership helped the 11 survivors remain alive until they could be rescued.

1944: Beginning of the Warsaw Uprising of Poles opposed to the Nazi Occupation.

1944: Anne Frank wrote the last entry in her diary.

1961: Six Flags opened their first amusement park in Arlington, Texas.

1966: Former Marine Charles Whitman climbed to the top of Texas Tower on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin with guns and ammunition and began firing on people below, killing 14 and wounding 31. He was finally stopped by the police who shot and killed him.

1966: Purges of intellectuals and imperialists became official policy of China beginning the Cultural Revolution.

1973: Death of Walter Ulbricht, German soldier and politician

1974: The United Nations authorized the creation of the "Green Line" dividing Cyprus into Greek and Turkish zones.

1975: Helsinki Final Act was signed by the U.S., the Soviet Union, Canada, and every European country except Albania.

1977: Death of Francis Gary Powers, American captain and pilot

1981: Initial broadcast of MTV.

2007: The I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota collapsed during the evening rush hour killing 13 people and injuring 145.

1996: Baylor alum Michael Johnson took the gold in the 200 at the Atlanta Olympics. Had won the 400 just days earlier. Was the most electrifying event I have ever witnessed. When the gun went up, there was complete silence in a stadium filled with 70 - 80,000 people!

1971 - George Harrison's "Concert for Bangladesh" at Madison Square Garden. Performers included Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston and Leon Russell.

Kinky Friedman "The Ballad of Charles Whitman"

Should have posted this yesterday:



Some of you might be more familiar with these versions:

August 2:


338 BC: A Macedonian army led by Philip II defeated the combined forces of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea, securing Macedonian hegemony in Greece and the Aegean. His son Alexander would create an empire.

216 BC: The Carthaginian army led by Hannibal defeated a larger Roman army at the Battle of Cannae. It is one of the greatest defeats in the history of Rome.

47 BC: Julius Caesar defeated Pharnaces, son of Mithridates the Great. After the victory, he commented "Veni, vidi, vici" ("I came, I saw, I conquered").

1100: Death of William II of England

1610: While searching for the fabled Northwest Passage, Henry Hudson discovered Hudson Bay.

1754: Birthday of Pierre Charles L'Enfant, French-American architect and engineer, designed Washington, D.C.

1776: Congressional delegates met to sign the Declaration of Independence, an enlarged copy prepared by a professional calligrapher. This is the one on display in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

1788: Death of Thomas Gainsborough, English painter

1790: First United States Census was conducted.

1830: Charles X of France abdicated the throne.

1834: Birthday of Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, French sculptor, designed the Statue of Liberty

1870: Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway, opened in London.

1873: The Clay Street Hill Railroad began operating the first cable car in San Francisco's famous cable car system.

1921: Death of Enrico Caruso, Italian tenor and actor

1922: Death of Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-Canadian engineer, inventor the telephone

1923: Pres. Warren G. Harding died of food poisoning while on an Alaska trip. Shortly thereafter, news would break of scandals relating to oil deposits on government lands at Teapot Dome that would taint his cabinet. His vice president, Calvin Coolidge, was sworn in as president by his father, a justice of the peace.

1923: Birthday of Shimon Peres, Polish-Israeli lawyer and politician, President of Israel

1924: Birthday of Carroll O'Connor, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter

1934: German President Paul von Hindenburg died leading Chancellor Adolf Hitle rcombined the two offices into one and became Fhrer.

1939: Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard wrote a letter to Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon before the Germans did.

1943: Jewish prisoners at the Treblinka death camp staged a revolt. 200 prisoners managed to escape, with half of them being killed after being chased down. Only about 70 are known to have survived to the end of the war.

1945: Conclusion of the Potsdam Conference

1948: Birthday of Dennis Prager, American radio host and author

1985: A sudden thunderstorm in north Texas caused a plane to crash at DFW Airport killing 135.

1990: Iraq invaded Kuwait over border oil claims eventually leading to the Gulf War.

1992: Jackie Joyner-Kersee won the gold in heptathlon during the Olympics in Barcelona. She also became the first woman to win two consecutive gold medals in the event.

August 3:


1342: During the Spanish Reconquista the Siege of Algeciras began.

1492: Christopher Columbus set sail with the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria sailing westward to establish a new trade route with east Asia. Instead, he would discover America, without realizing it, and transform the world.

1645: During the Thirty Years' War French forces defeated those of the Holy Roman Empire in the Second Battle of Nrdingen.

1770: Birthday of Frederick William III of Prussia

1778: The theater La Scala I Milan is inaugurated with the premiere of Antonio Salieri's Europa riconosciuta.

1852: Harvard won the first boat race between Yale and Harvard. It was also the first intercollegiate athletic event.

1867: Birthday of Stanley Baldwin, English businessman and politician, Prime Minister of the UK

1900: Founding of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company.

1900: Birthday of Ernie Pyle, American soldier and journalist

1914: Germany and France declared war on each other, the culmination of a series of events that began WWI.

1924: Birthday of Leon Uris, American soldier and author

1926: Birthday of Tony Bennett, American singer and actor

1936: Jesse Owens won the 100 meter dash at the Berlin Olympics.

1941: Birthday of Martha Stewart, American businesswoman, publisher, and author

1948: Former communist Whittaker Chambers accused Alger Hiss of being a communist spy. Hiss was a top State Department official, having advised both FDR & Trumanincluding at the important Yalta Conference. Evidence would later prove this to be true.

1949: Birth of the NBA.

1958: The USS Nautilus, the world's first nuclear submarine, submarine sailed underneath the North Pole.

1965: CNS television broadcast of US Marines burning a Vietnamese village sparked outrage.

1977: Tandy Corporation announces the TRS-80, one of the earliest mass produced personal computers.

1984: Birthday of Ryan Lochte, American swimmer and Olympian

2006: Death of Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, German-English soprano and actress

2015: Death of Robert Conquest, English-American historian, poet, and academic

2019: 23 people were killed and we injured in a shooting in El Paso, Texas.