This Day in History

July 24th

1132 – Battle of Nocera between Ranulf II of Alife and Roger II of Sicily.

1148 – Louis VII of France lays siege to Damascus during the Second Crusade.

1304 – Wars of Scottish Independence: Fall of Stirling Castle: King Edward I of England takes the stronghold using the War Wolf.

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

1487 – Citizens of Leeuwarden, Netherlands, strike against a ban on foreign beer.

1534 – French explorer Jacques Cartier plants a cross on the Gaspé Peninsula and takes possession of the territory in the name of Francis I of France.

1567 – Mary, Queen of Scots, is forced to abdicate and replaced by her 1-year-old son James VI.

1701 – Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founds the trading post at Fort Pontchartrain, which later becomes the city of Detroit.

1783 – The Kingdom of Georgia and the Russian Empire sign the Treaty of Georgievsk.

1814 – War of 1812: General Phineas Riall advances toward the Niagara River to halt Jacob Brown's American invaders.

1823 – Afro-Chileans are emancipated.

1823 – In Maracaibo, Venezuela, the naval Battle of Lake Maracaibo takes place, where Admiral José Prudencio Padilla defeats the Spanish Navy, thus culminating the independence for the Gran Colombia.

1847 – After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City.

1847 – Richard March Hoe, American inventor, patented the rotary-type printing press.

1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Kernstown: Confederate General Jubal Early defeats Union troops led by General George Crook in an effort to keep them out of the Shenandoah Valley.

1866 – Reconstruction: Tennessee becomes the first U.S. state to be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War.

1901 – O. Henry is released from prison in Columbus, Ohio, after serving three years for embezzlement from a bank.

1910 – The Ottoman Empire captures the city of Shkodër, putting down the Albanian Revolt of 1910.

1911 – Hiram Bingham III re-discovers Machu Picchu, "the Lost City of the Incas".

1915 – The passenger ship SS Eastland capsizes while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. A total of 844 passengers and crew are killed in the largest loss of life disaster from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes.

1922 – The draft of the British Mandate of Palestine was formally confirmed by the Council of the League of Nations; it came into effect on 26 September 1923.

1923 – The Treaty of Lausanne (1923), settling the boundaries of modern Turkey, is signed in Switzerland by Greece, Bulgaria and other countries that fought in World War I.

1924 – Themistoklis Sofoulis becomes Prime Minister of Greece.

1927 – The Menin Gate war memorial is unveiled at Ypres.

1929 – The Kellogg–Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, goes into effect (it is first signed in Paris on August 27, 1928, by most leading world powers).

1935 – The Dust Bowl heat wave reaches its peak, sending temperatures to 109 °F (43 °C) in Chicago and 104 °F (40 °C) in Milwaukee.

1937 – Alabama drops rape charges against the "Scottsboro Boys".

1943 – World War II: Operation Gomorrah begins: British and Canadian aeroplanes bomb Hamburg by night, and American planes bomb the city by day. By the end of the operation in November, 9,000 tons of explosives will have killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.

1950 – Cape Canaveral Air Force Station begins operations with the launch of a Bumper rocket.

1959 – At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev have a "Kitchen Debate".

1963 – The ship Bluenose II was launched in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. The schooner is a major Canadian symbol.

1966 – Michael Pelkey makes the first BASE jump from El Capitan along with Brian Schubert. Both came out with broken bones. BASE jumping has now been banned from El Cap.

1967 – During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declares to a crowd of over 100,000 in Montreal: Vive le Québec libre! ("Long live free Quebec!"); the statement angered the Canadian government and many Anglophone Canadians.

1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 11 splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean.

1974 – Watergate scandal: The United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and they order him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.

1977 – End of a four-day-long Libyan–Egyptian War.

1980 – The Quietly Confident Quartet of Australia wins the men's 4 x 100 metre medley relay at the Moscow Olympics, the only time the United States has not won the event at Olympic level.

1982 – Heavy rain causes a mudslide that destroys a bridge at Nagasaki, Japan, killing 299.

1983 – The Black July anti-Tamil riots begin in Sri Lanka, killing between 400 and 3,000. Black July is generally regarded as the beginning of the Sri Lankan Civil War.

1983 – George Brett batting for the Kansas City Royals against the New York Yankees, has a game-winning home run nullified in the "Pine Tar Incident".

1987 – US supertanker SS Bridgeton collides with mines laid by IRGC causing a 43-square-meter dent in the body of the oil tanker.

1987 – Hulda Crooks, at 91 years of age, climbed Mt. Fuji. Crooks became the oldest person to climb Japan's highest peak.

1998 – Russell Eugene Weston Jr. bursts into the United States Capitol and opens fire killing two police officers. He is later ruled to be incompetent to stand trial.

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.

2001 – The Bandaranaike Airport attack is carried out by 14 Tamil Tiger commandos. Eleven civilian and military aircraft are destroyed and 15 are damaged. All 14 commandos are shot dead, while seven soldiers from the Sri Lanka Air Force are killed. In addition, three civilians and an engineer die. This incident slowed down the Sri Lankan economy.

2013 – A high-speed train derails in Spain rounding a curve with an 80 km/h (50 mph) speed limit at 190 km/h (120 mph), killing 78 passengers.

2014 – Air Algérie Flight 5017 loses contact with air traffic controllers 50 minutes after takeoff. It was travelling between Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and Algiers. The wreckage is later found in Mali. All 116 people onboard are killed.

July 26th

657 – First Fitna: In the Battle of Siffin, troops led by Ali ibn Abu Talib clash with those led by Muawiyah I.

811 – Battle of Pliska: Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros I is killed and his heir Staurakios is seriously wounded.

920 – Rout of an alliance of Christian troops from Navarre and Léon against the Muslims at the Battle of Valdejunquera.

1309 – Henry VII is recognized King of the Romans by Pope Clement V.

1469 – Wars of the Roses: The Battle of Edgecote Moor, pitting the forces of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick against those of Edward IV of England, takes place.

1509 – The Emperor Krishnadevaraya ascends to the throne, marking the beginning of the regeneration of the Vijayanagara Empire.

1529 – Francisco Pizarro González, Spanish conquistador, is appointed governor of Peru.

1581 – Plakkaat van Verlatinghe (Act of Abjuration): The northern Low Countries declare their independence from the Spanish king, Philip II.

1703 – During the Bavarian Rummel the rural population of Tyrol drove the Bavarian Prince-Elector Maximilian II Emanuel out of North Tyrol with a victory at the Pontlatzer Bridge and thus prevented the Bavarian Army, which was allied with France, from marching as planned on Vienna during the War of the Spanish Succession.

1745 – The first recorded women's cricket match takes place near Guildford, England.

1758 – French and Indian War: The Siege of Louisbourg ends with British forces defeating the French and taking control of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.

1775 – The office that would later become the United States Post Office Department is established by the Second Continental Congress. Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania takes office as Postmaster General.

1788 – New York ratifies the United States Constitution and becomes the 11th state of the United States.

1803 – The Surrey Iron Railway, arguably the world's first public railway, opens in south London, United Kingdom.

1814 – The Swedish–Norwegian War begins.

1822 – José de San Martín arrives in Guayaquil, Ecuador, to meet with Simón Bolívar.

1822 – First day of the three-day Battle of Dervenakia, between the Ottoman Empire force led by Mahmud Dramali Pasha and the Greek Revolutionary force led by Theodoros Kolokotronis.

1847 – Liberia declares its independence.

1861 – American Civil War: George B. McClellan assumes command of the Army of the Potomac following a disastrous Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run.

1863 – American Civil War: Morgan's Raid ends; At Salineville, Ohio, Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan and 360 of his volunteers are captured by Union forces.

1882 – Premiere of Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal at Bayreuth.

1882 – The Republic of Stellaland is founded in Southern Africa.

1887 – Publication of the Unua Libro, founding the Esperanto movement.

1890 – In Buenos Aires, Argentina the Revolución del Parque takes place, forcing President Miguel Ángel Juárez Celman's resignation.

1891 – France annexes Tahiti.

1892 – Dadabhai Naoroji is elected as the first Indian Member of Parliament in Britain.

1897 – Anglo-Afghan War: The Pashtun fakir Saidullah leads an army of more than 10,000 to begin a siege of the British garrison in the Malakand Agency of the North West Frontier Province of India.

1899 – Ulises Heureaux, the 27th President of the Dominican Republic, is assassinated.

1908 – United States Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte issues an order to immediately staff the Office of the Chief Examiner (later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation).

1918 – Emmy Noether's paper, which became known as Noether's theorem was presented at Göttingen, Germany, from which conservation laws are deduced for symmetries of angular momentum, linear momentum, and energy.

1936 – Spanish Civil War: Germany and Italy decide to intervene in the war in support for Francisco Franco and the Nationalist faction.

1936 – King Edward VIII, in one of his few official duties before he abdicates the throne, officially unveils the Canadian National Vimy Memorial.

1937 – Spanish Civil War: End of the Battle of Brunete with the Nationalist victory.

1941 – World War II: In response to the Japanese occupation of French Indochina, the United States, Britain and the Netherlands freeze all Japanese assets and cut off oil shipments.

1944 – World War II: The Red Army enters Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, capturing it from the Nazis. Only 300 Jews survive out of 160,000 living in Lviv prior to occupation.

1945 – The Labour Party wins the United Kingdom general election of July 5 by a landslide, removing Winston Churchill from power.

1945 – World War II: The Potsdam Declaration is signed in Potsdam, Germany.

1945 – World War II: HMS Vestal is the last British Royal Navy ship to be sunk in the war.

1945 – World War II: The USS Indianapolis arrives at Tinian with components and enriched uranium for the Little Boy nuclear bomb.

1946 – Aloha Airlines begins service from Honolulu International Airport.

1947 – Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into United States law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, United States Department of Defense, United States Air Force, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the United States National Security Council.

1948 – U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs Executive Order 9981, desegregating the military of the United States.

1951 – Walt Disney's 13th animated film, Alice in Wonderland, premieres in London, England, United Kingdom.

1952 – King Farouk of Egypt abdicates in favor of his son Fuad.

1953 – Cold War: Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks, thus beginning the Cuban Revolution. The movement took the name of the date: 26th of July Movement

1953 – Arizona Governor John Howard Pyle orders an anti-polygamy law enforcement crackdown on residents of Short Creek, Arizona, which becomes known as the Short Creek raid.

1953 – Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment repel a number of Chinese assaults against a key position known as The Hook during the Battle of the Samichon River, just hours before the Armistice Agreement is signed, ending the Korean War.

1956 – Following the World Bank's refusal to fund building the Aswan Dam, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal, sparking international condemnation.

1957 – Carlos Castillo Armas, dictator of Guatemala, is assassinated.

1958 – Explorer program: Explorer 4 is launched.

1963 – Syncom 2, the world's first geosynchronous satellite, is launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta B booster.

1963 – An earthquake in Skopje, Yugoslavia (present-day North Macedonia) leaves 1,100 dead.

1963 – The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development votes to admit Japan.

1968 – Vietnam War: South Vietnamese opposition leader Trương Đình Dzu is sentenced to five years hard labor for advocating the formation of a coalition government as a way to move toward an end to the war.

1971 – Apollo program: Launch of Apollo 15 on the first Apollo "J-Mission", and first use of a Lunar Roving Vehicle.

1974 – Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis forms the country's first civil government after seven years of military rule.

1977 – The National Assembly of Quebec imposes the use of French as the official language of the provincial government.

1989 – A federal grand jury indicts Cornell University student Robert T. Morris, Jr. for releasing the Morris worm, thus becoming the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

1990 – The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is signed into law by President George H.W. Bush.

1993 – Asiana Airlines Flight 733 crashes into a ridge on Mt. Ungeo on its third attempt to land at Mokpo Airport, South Korea. 68 of the 116 people onboard are killed.

1999 – Kargil conflict officially comes to an end. The Indian Army announces the complete eviction of Pakistani intruders.

2005 – Space Shuttle program: STS-114 Mission: Launch of Discovery, NASA's first scheduled flight mission after the Columbia Disaster in 2003.

2005 – Mumbai, India receives 99.5cm of rain (39.17 inches) within 24 hours, resulting in floods killing over 5,000 people.

2008 – Fifty-six people are killed and over 200 people are injured, in the Ahmedabad bombings in India.

2009 – The militant Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram attacks a police station in Bauchi, leading to reprisals by the Nigeria Police Force and four days of violence across multiple cities.

2016 – The Sagamihara stabbings occur in Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. Nineteen people are killed.

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

2016 – Solar Impulse 2 becomes the first solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the Earth.

July 28th

1364 – Troops of the Republic of Pisa and the Republic of Florence clash in the Battle of Cascina.

1540 – Thomas Cromwell is executed at the order of Henry VIII of England on charges of treason. Henry marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the same day.

1571 – La Laguna encomienda, known today as the Laguna province in the Philippines is founded by the Spaniards as one of the oldest encomiendas (provinces) in the country.

1635 – In the Eighty Years' War the Spanish capture the strategic Dutch fortress of Schenkenschans.

1656 – Second Northern War: Battle of Warsaw begins.

1778 – Constitution of the province of Cantabria ratified at the Assembly Hall in Bárcena la Puente, Reocín, Spain.

1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just are executed by guillotine in Paris, France.

1808 – Mahmud II became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph of Islam.

1809 – Peninsular War: Battle of Talavera: Sir Arthur Wellesley's British, Portuguese and Spanish army defeats a French force led by Joseph Bonaparte.

1821 – José de San Martín declares the independence of Peru from Spain.

1854 – USS Constellation (1854), the last all-sail warship built by the United States Navy, is commissioned.

1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Ezra Church: Confederate troops make a third unsuccessful attempt to drive Union forces from Atlanta, Georgia.

1866 – At the age of 18, Vinnie Ream becomes the first and youngest female artist to receive a commission from the United States government for a statue (of Abraham Lincoln).

1868 – The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution is certified, establishing African American citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law.

1896 – The city of Miami, Florida is incorporated.

1914 – In the culmination of the July Crisis, Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, igniting World War I.

1915 – The United States begins a 19-year occupation of Haiti.

1917 – The Silent Parade took place in New York City, in protest to murders, lynchings, and other violence directed towards African Americans.

1932 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover orders the United States Army to forcibly evict the "Bonus Army" of World War I veterans gathered in Washington, D.C.

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

1938 – Hawaii Clipper disappears between Guam and Manila as the first loss of an airliner in trans-Pacific China Clipper service.

1939 – The Sutton Hoo helmet is discovered.

1942 – World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin issues Order No. 227. In response to alarming German advances, all those who retreat or otherwise leave their positions without orders to do so are to be tried in a military court, with punishment ranging from duty in a shtrafbat battalion, imprisonment in a Gulag, or execution.

1943 – World War II: Operation Gomorrah: The Royal Air Force bombs Hamburg, Germany causing a firestorm that kills 42,000 German civilians.

1945 – A U.S. Army B-25 bomber crashes into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building killing 14 and injuring 26.

1957 – Heavy rain and a mudslide in Isahaya, western Kyushu, Japan, kills 992.

1960 – The German Volkswagen Act came into force.

1965 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces his order to increase the number of United States troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.

1973 – Summer Jam at Watkins Glen: Nearly 600,000 people attend a rock festival at the Watkins Glen International Raceway.

1974 – Spetsgruppa A, Russia's elite special force, was formed.

1976 – The Tangshan earthquake measuring between 7.8 and 8.2 moment magnitude flattens Tangshan in the People's Republic of China, killing 242,769 and injuring 164,851.

1984 – The 1984 Summer Olympics officially known as the games of the XXIII were opened in Los Angeles.

1996 – The remains of a prehistoric man are discovered near Kennewick, Washington. Such remains will be known as the Kennewick Man.

2001 – Australian Ian Thorpe becomes the first swimmer to win six gold medals at a single World Championship.

2002 – Nine coal miners trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, are rescued after 77 hours underground.

2002 – Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise Flight 9560 crashes after takeoff from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, Russia, killing 14 of the 16 people on board.

2005 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army calls an end to its thirty-year-long armed campaign in Northern Ireland.

2010 – Airblue Flight 202 crashes into the Margalla Hills north of Islamabad, Pakistan, killing all 152 people aboard. It is the deadliest aviation accident in Pakistan history and the first involving an Airbus A321.

2011 – While flying from Seoul, South Korea to Shanghai, China, Asiana Airlines Flight 991 develops an in-flight fire in the cargo hold. The Boeing 747-400F freighter attempts to divert to Jeju International Airport, but crashes into the sea South-West of Jeju island, killing both crew members on board.

2017 – Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif was disqualified for lifetime by Supreme Court of Pakistan founding him guilty of corruption charges.

2018 – Australian Wendy Tuck becomes the first woman skipper to win the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race.

July 30th

762 – Baghdad is founded.

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

1502 – Christopher Columbus lands at Guanaja in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras during his fourth voyage.

1609 – Beaver Wars: At Ticonderoga (now Crown Point, New York), Samuel de Champlain shoots and kills two Iroquois chiefs on behalf of his native allies.

1619 – In Jamestown, Virginia, the first representative assembly in the Americas, the House of Burgesses, convenes for the first time.

1626 – An earthquake in Naples, Italy, kills about 10,000 people.

1635 – Eighty Years' War: The Siege of Schenkenschans begins; Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, begins the recapture of the strategically important fortress from the Spanish Army.

1656 – Swedish forces under the command of King Charles X Gustav defeat the forces of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at the Battle of Warsaw.

1676 – Nathaniel Bacon issues the "Declaration of the People of Virginia", beginning Bacon's Rebellion against the rule of Governor William Berkeley.

1729 – Founding of Baltimore, Maryland.

1733 – The first Masonic Grand Lodge in the future United States is constituted in Massachusetts.

1756 – In Saint Petersburg, Bartolomeo Rastrelli presents the newly built Catherine Palace to Empress Elizabeth and her courtiers.

1811 – Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, leader of the Mexican insurgency, is executed by the Spanish in Chihuahua City, Mexico.

1825 – Malden Island is discovered by captain George Byron, 7th Baron Byron.

1859 – First ascent of Grand Combin, one of the highest summits in the Alps.

1863 – American Indian Wars: Representatives of the United States and tribal leaders including Chief Pocatello (of the Shoshone) sign the Treaty of Box Elder.

1864 – American Civil War: Battle of the Crater: Union forces attempt to break Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia by exploding a large bomb under their trenches.

1865 – The steamboat Brother Jonathan sinks off the coast of Crescent City, California, killing 225 passengers, the deadliest shipwreck on the Pacific Coast of the U.S. at the time.

1866 – Armed Confederate veterans in New Orleans riot against a meeting of Radical Republicans, killing 48 people and injuring another 100.

1871 – The Staten Island Ferry Westfield's boiler explodes, killing over 85 people.

1912 – Japan's Emperor Meiji dies and is succeeded by his son Yoshihito, who is now known as the Emperor Taishō.

1930 – In Montevideo, Uruguay wins the first FIFA World Cup.

1932 – Premiere of Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees, the first cartoon short to use Technicolor and the first Academy Award winning cartoon short.

1945 – World War II: Japanese submarine I-58 sinks the USS Indianapolis, killing 883 seamen. Most die during the following four days, until an aircraft notices the survivors.

1956 – A joint resolution of the U.S. Congress is signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorizing In God We Trust as the U.S. national motto.

1962 – The Trans-Canada Highway, the longest national highway in the world, is officially opened.

1965 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid.

1966 – England defeats West Germany to win the 1966 FIFA World Cup at Wembley Stadium after extra time.

1969 – Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon makes an unscheduled visit to South Vietnam and meets with President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu and U.S. military commanders.

1971 – Apollo program: Apollo 15 Mission: David Scott and James Irwin on the Apollo Lunar Module Falcon land on the Moon with the first Lunar Rover.

1971 – An All Nippon Airways Boeing 727 and a Japanese Air Force F-86 collide over Morioka, Iwate, Japan killing 162.

1974 – Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon releases subpoenaed White House recordings after being ordered to do so by the Supreme Court of the United States.

1975 – Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He is never seen or heard from again.

1978 – The 730 (transport), Okinawa Prefecture changes its traffic on the right-hand side of the road to the left-hand side.

1980 – Vanuatu gains independence.

1980 – Israel's Knesset passes the Jerusalem Law.

1981 – As many as 50,000 demonstrators, mostly women and children, took to the streets in Łódź to protest food ration shortages in Communist Poland.

1990 – Conservative Member of Parliament is assassinated at his home by IRA terrorists in a car bombing after he assured the group that the British government would never surrender to them.

2003 – In Mexico, the last 'old style' Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line.

2006 – The 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.

2011 – Marriage of Queen Elizabeth II's eldest granddaughter Zara Phillips to former rugby player Mike Tindall.

2012 – A train fire kills 32 passengers and injures 27 on the Tamil Nadu Express in Andhra Pradesh, India.

2012 – A power grid failure in Delhi leaves more than 300 million people without power in northern India.

2014 – One hundred and fifty people are trapped after a landslide in Maharashtra, India; 20 are killed.

You have to check the July 30th Wikipedia page, I copied it from there thus everything schould be as I found it.

July 31st

30 BC – Battle of Alexandria: Mark Antony achieves a minor victory over Octavian's forces, but most of his army subsequently deserts, leading to his suicide.

781 – The oldest recorded eruption of Mount Fuji (Traditional Japanese date: 6th day of the 7th month of the 1st year of the Ten'o (天応) era).

1009 – Pope Sergius IV becomes the 142nd pope, succeeding Pope John XVIII.

1201 – Attempted usurpation by John Komnenos the Fat for the throne of Alexios III Angelos.

1423 – Hundred Years' War: Battle of Cravant: The French army is defeated by the English at Cravant on the banks of the river Yonne.

1451 – Jacques Cœur is arrested by order of Charles VII of France.

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

1498 – On his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to discover the island of Trinidad.

1588 – The Spanish Armada is spotted off the coast of England.

1618 – Maurice, Prince of Orange disbands the waardgelders militia in Utrecht, a pivotal event in the Remonstrant/Counter-Remonstrant tensions.

1655 – Russo-Polish War (1654–67): The Russian army enters the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Vilnius, which it holds for six years.

1658 – Aurangzeb is proclaimed Mughal emperor of India.

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

1712 – Action of 31 July 1712 (Great Northern War): Danish and Swedish ships clash in the Baltic Sea; the result is inconclusive.

1715 – Seven days after a Spanish treasure fleet of 12 ships left Havana, Cuba for Spain, 11 of them sink in a storm off the coast of Florida. A few centuries later, treasure is salvaged from these wrecks.

1741 – Charles Albert of Bavaria invades Upper Austria and Bohemia.

1763 – Odawa Chief Pontiac's forces defeat British troops at the Battle of Bloody Run during Pontiac's War.

1777 – The U.S. Second Continental Congress passes a resolution that the services of Gilbert du Motier "be accepted, and that, in consideration of his zeal, illustrious family and connexions, he have the rank and commission of major-general of the United States."

1790 – The first U.S. patent is issued, to inventor Samuel Hopkins for a potash process.

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

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

1874 – Dr. Patrick Francis Healy became the first African-American inaugurated as president of a predominantly white university, Georgetown University.

1904 – Russo-Japanese War: Battle of Hsimucheng: Units of the Imperial Japanese Army defeat units of the Imperial Russian Army in a strategic confrontation.

1913 – The Balkan States sign an armistice in Bucharest.

1917 – World War I: The Battle of Passchendaele begins near Ypres in West Flanders, Belgium.

1919 – German national assembly adopts the Weimar Constitution, which comes into force on August 14.

1932 – The NSDAP (Nazi Party) wins more than 38% of the vote in German elections.

1938 – Bulgaria signs a non-aggression pact with Greece and other states of Balkan Antanti (Turkey, Romania, Yugoslavia).

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

1941 – The Holocaust: Under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Nazi official Hermann Göring, orders SS General Reinhard Heydrich to "submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired Final Solution of the Jewish question."

1941 – World War II: The Battle of Smolensk concludes with Germany capturing about 300,000 Soviet Red Army prisoners.

1945 – Pierre Laval, the fugitive former leader of Vichy France, surrenders to Allied soldiers in Austria.

1948 – At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.

1948 – USS Nevada is sunk by an aerial torpedo after surviving hits from two atomic bombs (as part of post-war tests) and being used for target practice by three other ships.

1954 – On the Italian Karakoram expedition Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli become the first people to reach the summit of K2, the world's second highest mountain.

1964 – Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the moon, with images 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from earth-bound telescopes.

1970 – Black Tot Day: The last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy.

1971 – Apollo program: Apollo 15 astronauts become the first to ride in a lunar rover.

1972 – The Troubles: In Operation Motorman, the British Army re-takes the urban no-go areas of Northern Ireland. It is the biggest British military operation since the Suez Crisis of 1956, and the biggest in Ireland since the Irish War of Independence. Later that day, nine civilians are killed by car bombs in the village of Claudy.

1973 – A Delta Air Lines jetliner, flight DL 723 crashes while landing in fog at Logan International Airport, Boston, Massachusetts killing 89.

1975 – The Troubles: three members of a popular cabaret band and two gunmen are killed during a botched paramilitary attack in Northern Ireland.

1987 – A tornado occurs in Edmonton, Canada.

1988 – Thirty-two people are killed and 1,674 injured when a bridge at the Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal collapses in Butterworth, Penang, Malaysia.

1991 – The United States and Soviet Union both sign the START I Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the first to reduce (with verification) both countries' stockpiles.

1992 – The nation of Georgia joins the United Nations.

1992 – Thai Airways International Flight 311 crashes into a mountain north of Kathmandu, Nepal killing all 113 people on board.

1999 – Discovery Program: Lunar Prospector: NASA intentionally crashes the spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the Moon's surface.

2006 – Fidel Castro hands over power to his brother, Raúl.

2007 – Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and the longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end.

2012 – Michael Phelps breaks the record set in 1964 by Larisa Latynina for the most medals won at the Olympics.

2014 – Gas explosions in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung kill at least 20 people and injure more than 270.