0143 - Earliest known date in America -- pre-Mayan king Harvest-Bergvorst installed
0685 - Battle at Nechtansmere: Picts trounce Northumbrians
0996 - Pope Gregory V crowns his cousin Otto III German emperor
1602 - Martha's Vineyard 1st sighted (Captain Bartholomew Gosnold)
1674 - General Jan Sobieski chosen King of Poland
1819 - 1st bicycles (swift walkers) in US introduced in NYC
1832 - The first Democratic National Convention got under way, in Baltimore.
1840 - New Zealand becomes a British colony
1856 - Lawrence Kansas captured, sacked by pro-slavery forces
1863 - Siege on Port Hudson, Louisiana begins
1864 - Gen David Hunter takes command of Dept of West Virginia
1871 - -July 28] French government troops attack Commune of Paris; 17,000 die
1881 - In Washington, D.C., humanitarians Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons founded the American National Red Cross
1892 - The opera "I Pagliacci," by Ruggiero Leoncavallo, was first performed, in Milan, Italy.
1901 - Connecticut became the first state to enact a speed law. The law stipulated the speed of all motor vehicles should not exceed 12 mph on country highways and 8 mph within city limits.
1918 - House of Representatives passes amendment allowing women to vote
1924 - 14-year-old Bobby Franks was kidnapped and murdered in a "thrill killing" committed by Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb, two students at the University of Chicago.
[H]
1927 - Charles A. Lindbergh landed his "Spirit of St. Louis" near Paris, completing the first solo airplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
[H]
1932 - Five years to the day that American aviator Charles Lindbergh became the first pilot to accomplish a solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, female aviator Amelia Earhart repeated the feat
[H]
1941 - 1st US ship sunk by a U-boat (SS Robin Moore)
1941 - President Roosevelt proclaimed "an unlimited state of national emergency," seven months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
1945 - German Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler captured
1945 - Lauren Bacall & Humphrey Bogart wed
1950 - Vietnamese troops of Ho Chi-Minh attack Cambodia
1956 - The United States exploded the first airborne hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.
1959 - The musical "Gypsy," inspired by the life of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, opened on Broadway.
1961 - Governor Patterson declares martial law in Montgomery
1964 - 1st nuclear-powered lighthouse begins operations (Chesapeake Bay)
1968 - Nuclear-powered U.S. submarine Scorpion, with 99 men aboard, was last heard from. (The remains of the sub were later found on the ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores.)
1969 - Robert Kennedy's murderer Sirhan Sirhan sentenced to death
1970 - National Guard mobilizes to quell disturbances at Ohio State U
1972 - A Hungarian man, Lazlo Tooth, attacked Michelangelo's sculpture The Pieta while screaming-- I am Jesus Christ! The statue was badly damaged.
1975 - Trial against Baader-Meinhof gang begins in Stuttgart
1978 - 118 Unification church couples wed in England
1979 - Dan White convicted of manslaughter death of SF mayor Moscone
1980 - "Empire Strikes Back" premieres
1980 - Ensign Jean Marie Butler became the first woman to graduate from a U.S. service academy as she accepted her degree and commission from the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn.
1981 - Francois Mitterrand becomes president of France
1982 - British troops lands on Falkland Islands
1985 - After taking fertility drugs, Patti Frustaci of Orange, Calif., gave birth to the first recorded American septuplets. Six of the seven infants were born alive. Three survived.
1989 - Hong Kong Demonstrates in Support of Tiananmen Rebels
1991 - Ethiopia's Marxist president, Mengistu Haile Mariam, resigned and fled into exile as rebels continued to advance.
1991 - Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated during national elections by a suicide bomber.
1991 - Ethiopian President Mengistu Haile Mariam resigned and fled for Zimbabwe after 14 years in power.
1991 - South Korea's Prime Minister Ro Ja Bong quit after four weeks of student protests demanding his resignation.
1992 - The Coast Guard announced that high-seas interdiction of Haitian refugees was being drastically scaled back because refugee camps at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba, were filled.
1992 - Royal intervention ended four days of the bloodiest urban unrest in Thailand's history.
1993 - The Venezuelan Senate authorized the country's Supreme Court to try President Carlos Andres Perez on corruption charges. Perez was then suspended from office.
1994 - South Yemen secedes from Yemen
1996 - At least 615 people drowned when an overloaded Tanzanian ferry capsized in Lake Victoria.
1996 - Red Sox pitcher Roger Clemens beats Yankees for his 200th win
1997 - Prosecutors at the Oklahoma City bombing trial of Timothy McVeigh rested their case.
1997 - The space shuttle Atlantis undocked from the Russian Mir space station.
1998 - Two students were killed and 22 others wounded when a classmate opened fire in a high school cafeteria in Eugene, Ore. A 15-year-old boy was arrested in connection with the shootings; police found his parents shot to death at the family home.
1998 - Weeks of demonstrations led to the resignation of autocratic Indonesian President Suharto.
2000 - "Dancer in the Dark" won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival; the Grand Prize went to "Devils on the Doorstep."
2000 - Nineteen people were killed when a charter plane crashed in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania.
2001 - The Mitchell Report on Mideast violence called on Palestinians to jail terrorists and Israel to freeze settlement activity.
2001 - Cardinals from around the world gathered at the Vatican for a three-day meeting to ponder the challenges facing the Roman Catholic Church and who might lead it after Pope John Paul II.
2001 - The Supreme Court ruled, six-to-three, that a radio host cannot be sued for airing a phone conversation taped illegally by a third party.
1471 - Albrecht Durer, painter & printmaker, greatest German Renaissance artist.
1527 - Philip II, King of Spain (1556-98), invaded England and roasted heretics
1688 - Alexander Pope, England, poet (Rape of the Lock)
1860 - Willam Einthoven, Dutch physiologist/inventor (electrocardiogram)
1865 - C J Thomsen, Denmark, archaeologist, names Stone/Bronze/Iron Ages
1878 - Glenn Hammond Curtiss, US, inventor (hydroplane)
1901 - Horace Heidt (bandleader: Horace Heidt and His Musical Knights; radio show host: Pot O' Gold; talent show host: Youth Opportunity)
1904 - Fats (Thomas) Waller (blues musician: piano, organ, song writer: Ain't Misbehavin', Honeysuckle Rose; led sextet: It's a Sin to Tell a Lie, Smarty, All My Life, Two Sleepy People)
1904 - Robert Montgomery (actor: Private Lives, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Here Comes Mr. Jordan; director: Eye Witness, Lady in the Lake, The Gallant Hours; host: Robert Montgomery Presents; father of actress, Elizabeth Montgomery)
1916 - Harold Robbins (Francis Kane) (writer: The Carpetbaggers, The Piranhas, Stiletto, The Dream Merchants, The Betsy)
1917 - Dennis Day (Eugene McNulty) (singer: Mam'selle, Danny Boy, Clancy Lowered the Boom; actor: The Jack Benny Show, The Powers Girl, I'll Get By, Golden Girl)
1917 - Raymond (William) Burr (actor: Perry Mason, Ironside, Rear Window, A Place in the Sun, The Defense Never Rests, Godzilla)
1920 - Anthony Steel (actor: Wooden Horse, Malta Story, Perfect Crime)
1921 - Andrei Sakharov (physicist: produced first Soviet atomic bomb, also hydrogen bomb; human rights activist: formulated concepts of perestroika and glasnost)
1923 - Ara Parseghian (College Football Hall of Famer: head coach: Notre Dame, Northwestern, Miami; sports commentator: NBC Sports)
1924 - Edward Ray Fitzgerald (baseball)
1926 - Peggy Cass (comedienne: To Tell The Truth; actress: The Hathaways, Women in Prison, Aunty Mame, Paddy, Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Cheaters; radio serial: The Doctors)
1930 - Tommy Bryant (jazz musician)
1939 - David Groh (actor: General Hospital, Rhoda, Hot Shot, Broken Vows, Illegal in Blue)
1941 - Ronald Isley (singer: group: The Isley Brothers: Shout, Twist and Shout, This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You), It's Your Thing, That Lady, Fight the Power)
1944 - Marcie Blane (singer: Bobby's Girl)
1944 - Mary Robinson, pres of Republic of Ireland (Labour, 1990- )
1946 - Richard Hatch (actor: Battlestar Galactica, Ghetto Blaster, Party Line, Delta Force, Commando 2)
1948 - Leo (Gerard) Sayer (singer: Long Tall Glasses, You Make Me Feel like Dancing, When I Need You, More Than I Can Say)
1952 - Lawrence Tero (Tureaud) (actor: The A-Team [Mr. T], Rocky III, The Magic of the Golden Bear: Goldy 3)
1960 - Ken Hrbek (baseball: Minnesota Twins)
1985 - Frustaci Septuplets, Calif, Patricia Frustaci gives birth to 7
0987 - Louis V, last Carlovingian King of France (966-987), dies
1542 - Hernando De Soto dies in the American wilderness. [H]
1650 - James, Marquis of Montrose, Scottish general, hanged
1786 - Carl W Scheele, Swedish pharmacist/chemist, dies at 43
1810 - Charles Chevalier d'Eon de Beaumont, French spy/crossdresser, dies at 81
1923 - The Crow scout Curley, the last man on the army side to see Custer and the 7th Cavalry alive, died of pneumonia
1924 - Bobby Franks, murdered by Leopold & Loeb, at 14
1935 - Jane Addams, a founder of ACLU (Nobel 1973), dies at 65
1991 - Rajiv Gandhi, Indian Prime Minster (1984-91), assassinated at 46
1994 - John Henry Weidner, Dutch/US resistance fighter, dies at 81
1995 - Former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin died at a Washington D.C. hospital after suffering a massive stroke; he was 56.
1996 - Mary Perot Nichols, journalist, dies at 79
2000 - Death claimed actor Sir John Gielgud at age 96
2000 - Author Dame Barbara Cartland age 98.
