July 15th
 

1099 ~ The Crusaders of the First Crusade took Jerusalem.

1606 ~ Birthday of Rembrandt Van Rijn, Dutch artist.

1799 ~ French Captain Pierre Bouchard found the Rosetta Stone.

1870 ~ Georgia became the last of the Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.

1918 ~ WWI: Second Battle of the Marne began.

1940 ~ Death of Robert Wadlow; at 8 ft. 11.1 in, the tallest man ever documented.

1954 ~ First flight of the Boeing 707, the first American jet passenger airliner.

1995 ~ Bosnian Serbs force Muslims out of Srebrenica.

2002 ~ John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban", pleaded guilty to supplying aid to the enemy and possession of explosives during the commission of a felony.

2006 ~ Death of Robert H. Brooks, founder of Hooters of America.

Gerald Ford, 99 not out. Remarkable.

Late judge's call, jseal reminded me that President Ford left us in 2006. I had managed to erase that from the brainbank.

Sorry Gerald.

July 16th
 

622 ~ Start of the Islamic calendar.

1872 ~ Birthday of Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer who led the expedition which was the first to reach the South Pole.

1918 ~ At Ekaterinburg, Russia, Bolsheviks executed Czar Nicholas II and his family.

1945 ~ Allied leaders Winston Churchill, Harry Truman Josef Stalin meet at Potsdam.

1945 ~ The U.S. detonated the first nuclear weapon at the Trinity site near Alamogordo, New Mexico.

1955 ~ The original Disneyland park opened.

1969 ~ Apollo 11 was launched from Cape Kennedy to become the first manned mission to land on the moon.

1980 ~ Birthday of Jesse Jane, Porn Actress.

1980 ~ Birthday of Justine Joli, Porn Actress.

1994 ~ Death of Julian Schwinger, American physicist, Nobel laureate.

1945 ~ The U.S. detonated the first nuclear weapon at the Trinity site near Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Trinitite, a green glass product of the blast, is a sexy mineral, you just can't get hold of it for love or money (mostly love).

How about that! I had no idea that there WAS Trinitite! Very cool.

July 17th
 

1790 ~ Death of Adam Smith, Scottish Economist.

1899 ~ Birthday of James Cagney, Actor.

1947 ~ Birthday of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (formerly Parker Bowles), former British royal mistress and now wife of Prince Charles.

1961 ~ Death of Baseball hall-of-famer Ty Cobb.

1962 ~ Tha nuclear test shot Little Feller I became the last American atmospheric detonation at the Nevada Test Site.

1975 ~ An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.

1979 ~ Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza resigned and fled into exile in Miami.

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

2003 ~ Death of Dr. David Kelly, U.N. Weapons Inspector.

2005 ~ Death of Edward Heath, UK PM.

Whoops.... only just made it for today's!!

"When his brakes failed on a mountain road in 2001, Marco Vincento bailed out without warning. One of his eight passengers was able to stop the car...Marco, however, struck his head on the roadway and was killed!"

_________________

Sac Main Longchamp

July 18th
 

1909 ~ Birthday of Andrei Gromyko, Soviet Diplomat & President.

1918 ~ Birthday of Nelson Mandela, former President of SA, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 1993.

1922 ~ Birthday of Thomas Kuhn, Philosopher of Science.

1925 ~ Adolf Hitler’s "Mein Kampf" was published.

1927 ~ Birthday of Kurt Masur, Conductor.

1942 ~ The Messerschmitt Me-262 was test flown using only its jets for the first time.

1969 ~ After a party, Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car off a wooden bridge into a pond, and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, died.

1973 ~ Death of Jack Hawkins, English film actor.

2001 ~ In Baltimore, Maryland, a 60-car train derailment occurred in a tunnel, sparking a fire that lasted days and virtually shut down downtown.

2005 ~ Eric Rudolph was sentenced to life in prison for an abortion clinic bombing that killed an off-duty police officer.

July 19th
 

1374 ~ Death of Petrarch, Italian Poet & early Humanist.

1692 ~ Five women were hanged following the Salem Witch Trials for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.

1834 ~ Birthday of Edgar Degas, Impressionist Painter.

1848 ~ America’s first women's rights convention convened in Seneca Falls, N.Y. and "Bloomers" were introduced.

1870 ~ The Franco-Prussian war began.

1941 ~ Winston Churchill launched his "V for Victory" campaign in Europe.

1947 ~ Death of Aung San, Burmese nationalist. Aung San's daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, is now the leader of the Burmese opposition to the current military regime.

1996 ~ Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic was forced out of office.

2003 ~ Death of Bill Bright, evangelist, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ.

2008 ~ Death of Anastasia Blue, Porn Actress.

July 20th
 

1933 ~ In London, 500,000 marched against anti-Semitism.

1938 ~ Birthday of Dame Diana Rigg, Actress (The Avengers, In This House of Brede).

1938 ~ Birthday of Natalie Wood, Actress (Rebel Without a Cause, West Side Story).

1944 ~ Adolf Hitler was slightly wounded when a bomb exploded at his Rastenburg headquarters.

1946 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives voted 265-79 to put control of atomic energy in the hands of a civilian body, the Atomic Energy Commission, rather than leave the military in control.

1960 ~ Ceylon elected Sirimavo Bandaranaike Prime Minister, the world's first female head of government.

1969 ~ Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on the Moon.

1974 ~ Turkey invaded Cyprus.

1999 ~ After 38 years at the bottom of the Atlantic, astronaut Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 Mercury capsule was lifted to the surface.

2004 ~ The UN General Assembly passed a resolution demanding that Israel tear down the barrier it was building to seal off the West Bank.

July 22nd
 

1822 ~ Birthday of Br. Gregor Mendel, Austrian Geneticist.

1887 ~ Birthday of Gustav Hertz, German Physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1925.

1898 ~ Birthday of Alexander Calder, American Artist.

1933 ~ Wiley Post became the first man to fly solo around the world.

1934 ~ John Dillinger was shot to death by FBI agents in Chicago.

1948 ~ Newfoundland voted a 7,000 majority for union with Canada.

1967 ~ Death of Carl Sandburg, Poet.

1977 ~ Deng Xiaoping returned to Chinese Government.

1992 ~ Pablo Escobar, fearing extradition to the U.S., escaped from his luxury prison.

2003 ~ Saddam Hussein's sons Odai and Qusai were killed when U.S. forces stormed a villa in Mosul, Iraq.

July 23rd
 

1757 ~ Death of Domenico Scarlatti, Italian Composer.

1892 ~ Birthday of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia.

1914 ~ Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia following the killing of Archduke Francis Ferdinand.

1942 ~ The Treblinka extermination camp opened.

1952 ~ Creation of the European Coal and Steel community. This gave birth to European Economic Community (EEC), which itself later became the European Union.

1962 ~ Telstar relayed the first live trans-Atlantic television signal.

1982 ~ The International Whaling Commission voted a moratorium on commercial whaling by 1985-86.

1984 ~ Vanessa Williams became the first Miss America to resign her title, because of nude photographs published in Penthouse magazine.

1986 ~ Prince Andrew, Duke of York married Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey.

2002 ~ Death of Leo McKern , Australian actor, and one of my favorites.

July 24th
 

1783 ~ Birthday of Simón Bolívar, South American liberator.

1898 ~ Birthday of Amelia Earhart, American Aviatrix.

1924 ~ The World Chess Federation, FIDE, was founded in Paris.

1943 ~ The RAF Bomber Command bombed Hamburg by night, USAAF 8th Air Force Bomber Command by day. By the end of the operation, 9,000 tons of explosive & incendiary bombs created a firestorm which killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.

1948 ~ Marvin the Martian made his first appearance.

1959 ~ Khrushchev and Nixon had a war of words in the “Kitchen Debate”.

1967 ~ During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declared in Montreal "Vive le Québec libre!" (Long live free Quebec!). The statement, interpreted as support for Quebec independence, delighted many Quebecers but angered the Canadian government and many English Canadians.

1974 ~ Death of James Chadwick, English physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1935.

1980 ~ Birthday of Gauge, Porn Star.

1980 ~ Death of Peter Sellers, Actor.

1948 ~ Marvin the Martian made his first appearance.

My Hero.