June 26th
 

1824 ~ Birthday of Lord Kelvin, Physicist.

1898 ~ Birthday of Willy Messerschmitt, Aircraft Designer.

1933 ~ Birthday of Claudio Abbado, Conductor.

1934 ~ Initial flight of the first practical helicopter, the Focke-Wulf 61. You must scroll down a bit through the Hanna Reitsch page to get to the FW-61 entry, but her write up of her experience it is an interesting read.

1959 ~ Queen Elizabeth and President Eisenhower inaugurated the St Lawrence Seaway.

1963 ~ President Kennedy visited West Berlin, where he offered American solidarity to the citizens of West Germany: "Ich bin ein Berliner".

1964 ~ The Beatles released the album A Hard Day's Night.

1997 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Communications Decency Act violated the First Amendment, and thus unconstitutional.

2003 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that gender-based sodomy laws are unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas.

2007 ~ Liz Claiborne, Belgian born fashion designer.

June 27th
 

1829 ~ Death of James Smithson, English scientist and philanthropist.

1838 ~ Birthday of Paul von Mauser, Weapon Designer.

1880 ~ Birthday of Helen Keller, spokeswoman for the Deaf and Blind.

1893 ~ Crash of the New York Stock Exchange.

1905 ~ Mutiny on the battleship Potemkin.

1950 ~ The U.S. decided to send armed forces to fight in the Korean War.

1954 ~ The world's first nuclear power station went on line in Obninsk, near Moscow.

1957 ~ First British Smoking Causes Lung Cancer report released.

1967 ~ The world's first ATM installed in Enfield, London.

2001 ~ Death of Jack Lemmon, Actor & Film Director.

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday dear Paul von Mauser ( and thanks for my G98),

Happy Birthday to you.

June 28th
 

1577 ~ Birthday of Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish Baroque Painter.

1712 ~ Birthday of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Franco-Swiss Philosopher.

1880 ~ The Australian bushranger Ned Kelly was captured at Glenrowan.

1914 ~ Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and his wife Sophia were killed by a Serbian nationalist, the casus belli of World War I.

1919 ~ The Treaty of Versailles was signed, ending World War I.

1926 ~ Birthday of Mel Brooks, Filmmaker.

1992 ~ Death of Mikhail Tal, eighth World Chess Champion.

1996 ~ The Citadel voted to admit women, ending a 153-year-old men-only policy at the South Carolina military school.

2004 ~ The U.S.-led coalition transferred sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government.

2006 ~ Death of George Unwin, British WWII fighter ace.

June 29th
 

1861 ~ Death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Poet. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…”

1868 ~ Birthday of George Ellery Hale, Astronomer.

1895 ~ Death of Thomas Henry Huxley, Scientist. "Darwin's Bulldog"

1922 ~ France granted 1 km² at Vimy Ridge "freely, and for all time, to the Government of Canada, the free use of the land exempt from all taxes".

1963 ~ Birthday of Anne-Sophie Mutter, Violinist.

1974 ~ Isabel Peron is sworn in as first female president for Argentina.

1995 ~ U.S. Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with Russian space station Mir.

1995 ~ The Sampoong Department Store collapse disaster.

2003 ~ Death of Katharine Hepburn, Actress.

2007 ~ Apple released the iPhone.

June 30th
 

1817 ~ Birthday of Joseph Dalton Hooker, Botanist & Champion of Charles Darwin.

1905 ~ During his annus mirabilis, Albert Einstein published the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies (PDF) in which he introduced special relativity.

That must have been an exciting period to be a physicist!

1908 ~ Tunguska impact event occurred in Siberia.

1934 ~ Night of the Long Knives, Adolf Hitler's violent purge of his political rivals in Germany took place.

1936 ~ ''Gone with the Wind'' by Margaret Mitchell published.

1943 ~ Birthday of Florence Ballard, American Singer (The Supremes).

1971 ~ The crew of the Soyuz 11 spacecraft died when the landing capsule depressurized after separating from the main craft.

1985 ~ Birthday of Mike Tyson, American boxer.

1990 ~ East and West Germany merged their economies.

1997 ~ The UK returns sovereignty over Hong Kong to the PRC.

July 1st
 

1646 ~ Birthday of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, German Mathematician & Philosopher.

1863 ~ The American Civil War battle of Gettysburg began.

1906 ~ Birthday of Estée Lauder, Cosmetics Pioneer.

1916 ~ On the first day of the Battle of the Somme 18,000 British soldiers were killed, and 40,000 wounded.

1925 ~ Death of Erik Satie, French Composer.

1963 ~ The British Government admitted that former diplomat Kim Philby had worked as a Soviet agent.

1980 ~ "O Canada" became the national anthem of Canada.

2000 ~ Death of Walter Matthau, Actor.

2004 ~ Cassini-Huygens was successfully inserted into orbit around Saturn.

2004 ~ Death of Marlon Brando, Actor.

July 2nd
 

1906 ~ Birthday of Hans Bethe, German-born Physicist., awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1967.

1937 ~ Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean.

1947 ~ Something the Army Air Force later said was a weather balloon crashed near Roswell, N.M. Eyewitness accounts gave rise to speculation it might have been an alien spacecraft.

1961 ~ Death of Ernest Hemingway, Author, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 1954.

1964 ~ President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

1966 ~ France began nuclear weapons testing at Moruroa in the South Pacific.

1982 ~ Larry Walters attached 45 helium balloons to a lawn chair and ascended into history and to a height of 11,000 feet.

1997 ~ Death of Jimmy Stewart, Actor.

1999 ~ Death of Mario Puzo, Author (The Godfather).

2007 ~ Death of Beverly Sills, Opera Soprano.

July 3rd
 

1863 ~ The final day of the battle of Gettysburg.

1883 ~ Birthday of Franz Kafka, Czech-born German author.

1935 ~ Death of André Citroën, Automobile Pioneer.

1938 ~ World speed record, 126 mph, set for a steam railway locomotive, by the Mallard.

1962 ~ Algeria became independent after 132 years of French rule.

1969 ~ Death of Brian Jones, English musician (The Rolling Stones).

1969 ~ A test flight of the Soviet N1 rocket ended in a spectactular failure.

1971 ~ Death of Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors.

1986 ~ Death of Rudy Vallee, Singer, Actor, Bandleader, & Entertainer.

1988 ~ USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf.

1776 ~ The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.

1845 ~ American writer Henry David Thoreau began a two-year experiment in simple living at Walden Pond near Concord, Mass.

1855 ~ The first edition of Walt Whitman's book of poems Leaves of Grass was published.

1883 ~ Birthday of Rube Goldberg, Cartoonist.

1885 ~ Birthday of Louis B. Mayer, Movie Executive (one of the M’s in MGM).

1934 ~ Death of Maria Curie, Polish-born scientist, recipient of he Nobel Prize in Physics 1903.

1971 ~ Birthday of Koko, the sign-language gorilla.

1976 ~ The U.S. celebrated its Bicentennial.

1976 ~ Israeli commandos rescued 100 hostages at Entebbe Airport, Uganda.

2006 ~ North Korea tested four short-range, one medium-range, and a long-range missle over the Sea of Japan.

July 5th
 

1810 ~ Birthday of Phineas Taylor "P. T." Barnum, Circus Owner.

1853 ~ Birthday of Cecil Rhodes, South African Politician.

1911 ~ Birthday of Georges Pompidou, President of France.

1937 ~ Spam was introduced the Hormel Foods Corporation.

1948 ~ British National Health Service (NHS) Act enacted.

1951 ~ William Shockley invented the junction transistor.

1961 ~ Birthday of Isabelle Poulenard, French soprano.

1975 ~ Arthur Ashe becomes the first black man to win the Wimbledon singles' championship.

1989 ~ Oliver North received a $150,000 fine and a suspended prison term for his part in the Iran-Contra affair.

1996 ~ Birthday of Dolly the sheep, first cloned mammal.

July 6th
 

1935 ~ Birthday of Tenzin Gyatso, 14th and current Dalai Lama.

1957 ~ Althea Gibson became the first black tennis player to win a Wimbledon singles title.

1962 ~ Death of William Faulkner, American Novelist.

1964 ~ A Hard Day's Night, the first Beatles film, premiered.

1971 ~ Death of Louis Armstrong, Jazz Musician.

1973 ~ Death of Otto Klemperer, German Conductor.

1974 ~ The radio program A Prairie Home Companion was first broadcast.

1989 ~ The Piper Alpha drilling platform in the North Sea was destroyed by explosions and fires killing 167 oil workers.

1997 ~ The rover Sojourner rolled onto the Martian landscape to begin inspecting soil and rocks.

1998 ~ Death of Roy Rogers, Cowboy Actor & Singer.

July 7th
 

1860 ~ Birthday of Gustav Mahler, Austrian Composer.

1887 ~ Birthday of Marc Chagall, Russian-born Painter.

1898 ~ The U.S. annexed Hawaii as a territory.

1907 ~ Birthday of Robert Heinlein, Science Fiction Writer.

1930 ~ Death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Scottish Writer.

1940 ~ Birthday of Ringo Starr, Beatle.

1947 ~ The Roswell UFO incident.

1980 ~ Sharia law established in Iran.

1981 ~ President Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female justice on the Supreme Court.

2005 ~ Terrorist bombings in London killed 52 victims and four suicide bombers.

And on the Seventh hour,
Of the Seventh day,
Of the Seventh Month,
mrs zoid came into this world.

I'll be giving her her birthday spankin's later ;)

Slap her for us too.

July 8th
 

1822 ~ Death of Percy Shelley, English poet.

1838 ~ Birthday of Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, German Inventor.

1882 ~ Birthday of Percy Grainger, Australian Composer.

1889 ~ In the last championship bare-knuckle boxing match, John L. Sullivan defeated Jake Kilrain.

1889 ~ The first issue of the Wall Street Journal published.

1950 ~ General Douglas MacArthur was named commander-in-chief of UN forces in Korea.

1986 ~ Kurt Waldheim was inaugurated as president of Austria despite a controversy over his alleged ties to Nazi war crimes.

1994 ~ Death of Kim Il-sung, North Korean despot.

1997 ~ The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland were invited to join NATO. (How times change! Whoda ever thunk it!)

1997 ~ Mayo Clinic researchers warned that the dieting-drug "fen-phen" could cause severe heart and lung damage.

July 9th
 

1896 ~ William Jennings Bryan delivered his “Cross of Gold” speech.

1879 ~ Birthday of Ottorino Respighi, Italian composer (Pines of Rome, Ancient Airs and Dances).

1900 ~ Queen Victoria gave royal assent to an act creating the Commonwealth of Australia, uniting separate colonies under one federal government.

1911 ~ Birthday of John A. Wheeler, American physicist (coined the terms black hole and wormhole).

1916 ~ Birthday of Edward Heath, P.M. of the UK

1974 ~ Death of Earl Warren, Governor of California, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

1989 ~ Two bombs exploded in Mecca, killing one pilgrim and wounding 16 others.

1995 ~ The Grateful Dead played their last concert, at Soldier Field in Chicago.

1997 ~ Mike Tyson's boxing license was suspended and he was fined $3 million for biting Evander Holyfield's ear in a televised match.

2001 ~ The Big Bang Theory of the origin of the universe received substantial support.

July 10th
 

1839 ~ Birthday of Adolphus Busch, German-born Brewer.

1856 ~ Birthday of Nikola Tesla, Croatian physicist.

1895 ~ Birthday of Carl Orff, German Composer.

1925 ~ The "Monkey Trial" of John Scopes began in Dayton, Tennessee.

1940 ~ The Luftwaffe began the Battle of Britain.

1962 ~ The world's first active communications satellite, Telstar, and first privately sponsored space launch.

1985 ~ The Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior was sunk in Auckland Harbor by French agents.

1997 ~ Scientists reported their DNA analysis findings which support the Out of Africa hypothesis of human evolution.

2002 ~ At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens' painting The Massacre of the Innocents was sold for $76.2 million.

2003 ~ Death of Lord Shawcross, U.K. chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.

July 11th
 

1798 ~ The U.S. Marine Corps was re-created by an act of Congress.

1859 ~ Charles Dickens' "A Tale Of Two Cities" was published.

1899 ~ Birthday of E. B. White, American Writer. (Stuart Little, Charlotte's Web, The Trumpet of the Swan.)

1914 ~ Babe Ruth made his major league debut with the Boston Red Sox.

1920 ~ Birthday of Yul Brynner, Russian-born actor.

1937 ~ Death of George Gershwin, American Composer.

1994 ~ Death of Savannah, Porn Star.

1979 ~ Skylab deorbited.

1989 ~ Death of Sir Laurence Olivier, Actor.

1995 ~ Bosnian Serbs capture the city of Srebrenica.

"Deorbited". Yeah, there's a good euphamism.

July 12th
 

1536 ~ Death of Erasmus, Dutch Writer & Philosopher.

1690 ~ William of Orange's army won the Battle of the Boyne.

1730 ~ Birthday of Josiah Wedgwood, English Potter.

1773 ~ Death of Johann Joachim Quantz, German Flutist & Composer.

1862 ~ Medal of Honor authorized by the U.S. Congress.

1943~ Birthday of Christine McVie, British singer, musician, & songwriter (Fleetwood Mac).

1943 ~ Turning point of CITADEL (Battle of Kursk).

1962~ The Rolling Stones perform their first public concert.

1984 ~ Walter Mondale named Geraldine Ferraro his Vice Presidential running mate.

1990~ Russian republic president Boris Yeltsin resigned from the Communist Party.

It wasn't your country they chose to deorbit it onto.

Sorry about that, chief, but Oz was the choice of the fates, not NASA...steering was very much kaput by then...

July 13th
 

100 BC ~ Birthday of Julius Caesar, Soldier & Politician.

1793 ~ French revolutionary writer Jean Paul Marat was stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday, who was executed four days later.

1837 ~ Queen Victoria moved into Buckingham Palace – the first monarch to live there.

1908 ~ Women first included in modern Olympic competition.

1923 ~ The first Hollywood Sign was dedicated. It read "HOLLYWOODLAND".

1940 ~ Birthday of Patrick Stewart, English actor (Star Trek: The Next Generation).

1955 ~ Ruth Ellis became the last woman in England to be executed.

1960 ~ John F. Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination at the party's convention in Los Angeles.

1977 ~ A 25-hour blackout hit New York City.

1985 ~ Live Aid, an international rock concert in London, Philadelphia, Moscow and Sydney, Australia, was held to raise money for Africa's starving people.

Are you saying that they had lost Control?

Carelessness to the Max.

July 14th
 

1789 ~ Citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille. Generally recognized as the beginning of the French Revolution.

1798 ~ The Sedition Act made it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the U.S. government.

1862 ~ Birthday of Gustav Klimt, Austrian Painter & Graphic Artist.

1881 ~ Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett.

1887 ~ Death of Alfred Krupp, German munitions manufacturer.

1912 ~ Birthday of Woody Guthrie, American folk singer.

1913 ~ Birthday of Gerald Ford, U.S. President.

1933 ~ Gleichschaltung: All German political parties except the Nazi Party were outlawed.

1965 ~ Mariner 4 flyby of Mars took the first close-up photos of another planet.

2000 ~ A Florida jury ordered five major tobacco companies to pay smokers $145 billion in punitive damages. (The verdict was later overturned by the Florida Supreme Court.).

Ah, yes, Bastille Day. When the French peasantry said "We mad as hell and we're not gonna take it...we done fucked up."

July 15th
 

1099 ~ The Crusaders of the First Crusade took Jerusalem.

1606 ~ Birthday of Rembrandt Van Rijn, Dutch artist.

1796 ~ Birthday of Thomas Bulfinch, American Mythologist.

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.

1926 ~ Birthday of Leopoldo Galtieri, Argentine Dictator.

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.

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 ~ IAt 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.

1948 ~ Birthday of Pinchas Zukerman, Israeli Violinist.

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.

1989 ~ Death of Herbert von Karajan, Austrian Conductor.

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

July 17th
 

656 ~ Death of Uthman ibn Affan, Third Caliph, assassinated.

1790 ~ Death of Adam Smith, Scottish Economist.

1794 ~ The execution of the sixteen Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne.

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.

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

July 18th
 

1817 ~ Death of Jane Austen, English Novelist.

1887 ~ Birthday of Vidkun Quisling, Norwegian Politician & Traitor.

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, into a pond, and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, died.

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.

1898 ~ Birthday of Herbert Marcuse, Communist Philosopher.

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.

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 21st
 

1796 ~ Death of Robert Burns, Scottish Poet.

1899 ~ Birthday of Ernest Hemingway, American Author.

1861 ~ First Battle of Bull Run - the first major battle of the American Civil War began.

1911 ~ Birthday of Marshall McLuhan, Canadian Communications Theorist.

1925 ~ In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $100.

1948 ~ Birthday of Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam), English Singer.

1954 ~ France surrendered North Vietnam to the Viet Minh.

1970 ~ The Aswan High Dam in Egypt was completed at the end of eleven years of construction

1994 ~ Tony Blair was declared the winner of the leadership election of the British Labour Party.

2006 ~ Death Ta Mok, Khmer Rouge war criminal.

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 becomes first man to fly solo around the world.

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

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.

1998 ~ Death of Alan Shepard, Astronaut.

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.

1929 ~ The Italian government banned the use of "foreign" words.

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.

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.

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.

2005 ~ Lance Armstrong closed out his cycling career with a seventh consecutive Tour de France victory.

De Gaulle had that extra special touch of French arrogance that seemed to piss off a lot of people by playing into a lot of Anglic stereotypes about France.

July 25th
 

1834 ~ Death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet. (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner & Kubla Khan )

1907 ~ Korea became a protectorate of Japan.

1909 ~ Louis Bleriot made the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine. Calais to Dover in 37 minutes.

1917 ~ Sir Thomas Whyte introduced the first income tax in Canada as a "temporary" measure (lowest bracket is 4% and highest is 25%).

1848 ~ Birthday of Arthur Balfour, UK PM, remembered for issuing the British declaration of support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

1946 ~ Crossroads Baker, a 21-kiloton nuclear weapon was detonated underwater in the lagoon of Bikini atoll.

1956 ~ 51 people died when the Italian liner Andrea Doria collided with the Swedish ship Stockholm.

1978 ~ Louise Brown, the first baby conceived by in-vitro fertilization, was born in Oldham, England.

1984 ~ Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space.

2000 ~ An Air France Concorde crashed just after takeoff from Paris, killing 113.

July 26th
 

1856 ~ Birthday of George Bernard Shaw, Author, Playwright, awarded t he Nobel Prize in Literature 1925.

1875 ~ Birthday of Carl Jung, Swiss Psychiatrist.

1882 ~ Richard Wagner's "Parsifal" premiered at Bayreuth.

1898 ~ Birthday of Willy Messerschmitt, German aircraft engineer and designer.

1928 ~ Birthday of Stanley Kubrick, Movie Director.

1943 ~ Birthday of Mick Jagger, English Musician. (Rolling Stones)

1947 ~ U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act into law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.

1953 ~ Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution began.

1956 ~ Egyptian leader Gamal Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal sparking international condemnation.

1991 ~ Paul Reubens, aka Pee Wee Herman, was arrested for allegedly masturbating at a Sarasota, Florida adult theatre.