Today in history

[dlbpharmd]

July 18

1789 Robespierre, a deputy from Arras, France, decides to back the French Revolution.

1812 Great Britain signs the Treaty of Orebro, making peace with Russia and Sweden.

1830 Uruguay adopts a liberal constitution.

1861 Union and Confederate troops skirmish at Blackburn's Ford, Virginia, in a prelude to the Battle of Bull Run.

1877 Inventor Thomas Edison records the human voice for the first time.

1872 The Ballot Act is passed in Great Britain, providing for secret election ballots.

1935 Ethiopian King Haile Selassie urges his countrymen to fight to the last man against the invading Italian army.

1936 General Francisco Franco of Spain revolts against the Republican government, starting the Spanish Civil War.

1942 The German Me-262, the first jet-propelled aircraft to fly in combat, makes its first flight.

1971 New Zealand and Austrailia announce they will pull their troops out of Vietnam.

1994 In Buenos Aires, a massive car bomb kills 96 people.

[dlbpharmd]

July 19

1525 The Catholic princes of Germany form the Dessau League to fight against the Reformation.

1545 King Henry VIII of England watches his flagship, Mary Rose, capsize as it leaves to battle the French.

1788 Prices plunge on the Paris stock market.

1799 The Rosetta Stone, a tablet with hieroglyphic translations into Greek, is found in Egypt.

1848 The first Women's Rights Convention convenes in Seneca Falls, N.Y, organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

1870 France declares war on Prussia.

1942 German U-boats are withdrawn from positions off the U.S. Atlantic coast due to American anti-submarine countermeasures.

1943 More than 150 B-17 and 112 B-24 bombers attack Rome for the first time.

1975 Apollo and Soyuz spacecrafts dock in orbit.

[Damelon]

July 19, 1963: Cracking the 100-Kilometer-High Barrier ... in a Plane

1963: Test pilot Joe Walker takes an X-15 aircraft to an altitude of 67 miles (106 kilometers), becoming the only pilot to surpass the 100-kilometer barrier in a rocket plane until Mike Melvill, piloting SpaceShipOne, duplicates the feat in 2004.
Walker, who flew P-38 Lightnings during World War II, became a test pilot in the early '50s and gained experience in a variety of research aircraft, including the Bell X-1, X-5 and Douglas X-3, which he said was the worst plane he ever flew. But he made his name flying North American Aviation's X-15.
Walker made his first X-15 flight in 1960 and was completely surprised by the plane's power, hollering, "Oh my God!" as the afterburners kicked in (and eliciting a joking, "Yes? You called?" from a ground controller). But he would go on to make 24 flights in the X-15, including the memorable July 19 ascent, known as Flight 90.
Breaking the 100-kilometer barrier also meant penetrating the threshold of space, so the flight qualified Walker as an astronaut. When he repeated the feat a month later, he became the first person to enter space twice.
Walker also recorded the fastest speed ever reached in an X-15: On June 27, 1962, he hit 4,104 mph, or Mach 5.92.
Walker was killed in 1966 when the F-104 Starfighter he was piloting collided with a prototype XB-70 Valkyrie high-level bomber while flying in tight formation above Barstow, California.

[Avatar]

Probably would have wanted to go that way.

--A

[Damelon]

Yes, a fitting end.

[dlbpharmd]

July 20

1402 Tamerlane's Mongols defeat Ottoman Turks at Angora.

1588 The Spanish Armada sets sail from Corunna.

1715 The Riot Act goes into effect in England.

1864 Confederate General John Bell Hood attacks Union forces under General William T. Sherman outside Atlanta.

1867 Imperial troops in Guizhou, China, kill 20,000 Miao rebels.

1881 Sioux chief Sitting Bull surrenders to the U.S. Army.

1917 Alexander Kerensky becomes the premier of Russia.

1942 The U.S. Army Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) begins its first training class at Fort Des Moines, Iowa.

1944 Adolf Hitler is wounded in an assassination attempt by German Army officers at Rastenburg.

1950 The U.S. Army's Task Force Smith is pushed back by superior North Korean forces.

1951 King Abdullah of Jordan is assassinated.

1969 Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin become the first men to walk on the moon.

1976 The Viking spacecraft lands on Mars and begins taking soil samples.

[Damelon]

July 20, 1969: One Small Step ... One Giant Leap ...

1969: The Soviet Union was first to land a spacecraft on the moon, in 1959, but NASA's Neil Armstrong becomes the first human to set foot on the lunar surface, realizing humanity's age-old dream. And effectively winning the space race for the United States.
Armstrong and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin left the Apollo 11 command module (piloted by Michael Collins) in orbit and performed a landing in the lunar module Eagle. At 4:18 p.m. EDT, Armstrong announced to a watching and waiting world that "The Eagle has landed." Six-and-a-half hours later, he stepped onto the powdery surface with the words, "That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Aldrin soon followed Armstrong down the ladder to become the second man to stand on the moon.
The mission was by no means a slam dunk. There was real fear that once on the lunar surface the astronauts might end up marooned and beyond rescue. In fact, President Nixon had a condolence speech ready to go in the event things turned out badly. Things went as planned, however, and Armstrong and Aldrin returned to the command module after leaving behind a plaque inscribed with the words: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind."
Five more Apollo missions carried astronauts to the moon before the program ended in 1972. (There was to have been six, but Apollo 13's mission ended in near disaster.) The last man to leave his footprint on the moon was Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan, on Dec. 14, 1972.

[dlbpharmd]

July 21

1403 Henry IV defeats the Percys in the Battle of Shrewsbury in England.

1667 The Peace of Breda ends the Second Anglo-Dutch War and cedes Dutch New Amsterdam to the English.

1711 Russia and Turkey sign the Treaty of Pruth, ending the year-long Russo-Turkish War.

1718 The Treaty of Passarowitz is signed by Austria, Venice and the Ottoman Empire.

1773 Pope Clement XIV abolishes the Jesuit order.

1798 Napoleon Bonaparte defeats the Arab Mameluke warriors at the Battle of the Pyramids.

1861 In the first major battle of the Civil War, Confederate forces defeat the Union Army along Bull Run near Manassas Junction, Virginia. The battle becomes known as Manassas by the Confederates, while the Union calls it Bull Run.

1865 Wild Bill Hickok kills gunman Dave Tutt in Springfield, Illinois, in the first formal quick-draw duel.

1873 The James Gang robs a train in Adair, Iowa.

1896 Mary Church Terrell founds the National Association of Colored Women in Washington, D.C.

1906 French Captain Alfred Dreyfus is vindicated of his earlier court-martial for spying for Germany.

1919 The British House of Lords ratifies the Versailles Treaty.

1925 John Scopes is found guilty for teaching evolution in Dayton, Tenn., and is fined $100.

1941 France accepts Japan's demand for military control of Indochina.

1944 U.S. Army and Marine forces land on Guam in the Marianas.

1954 The French sign an armistice with the Viet Minh that ends the war but divides Vietnam into two countries.

1960 Sirimavo Bandaranaike becomes the first woman prime minister of Ceylon.

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July 22

1298 King Edward I defeats Scots under William Wallace at Falkirk.

1515 Emperor Maximillian and Vladislav of Bohemia forge an alliance between the Hapsburg and Jagiello dynasties in Vienna.

1652 Prince Conde's rebels narrowly defeat Chief Minister Mazarin's loyalist forces at St. Martin, near Paris.

1789 Thomas Jefferson becomes the first head of the U.S. Department of Foreign Affairs.

1812 A British army under the Duke of Wellington defeats the French at Salamanca, Spain.

1814 Five Indian tribes in Ohio make peace with the United States and declare war on Britain.

1881 The first volume of The War of the Rebellion: A compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, is published.

1894 The first automobile race takes place between Paris and Rouen, France.

1934 American gangster John Dillinger is shot dead by FBI officers outside a Chicago cinema.

1938 The Third Reich issues special identity cards for Jewish Germans.

1943 Palermo, Sicily surrenders to General George S. Patton's Seventh Army.

1966 B-52 bombers hit the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Vietnam for the first time.

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July 23

1540 Thomas Cromwell is beheaded on Tower Hill in England.

1627 Sir George Calvert arrives in Newfoundland to develop his land grant.

1637 King Charles of England hands over the American colony of Massachusetts to Sir Fernando Gorges, one of the founders of the Council of New England.

1664 Wealthy, non-church members in Massachusetts are given the right to vote.

1793 The French garrison at Mainz, Germany, falls to the Prussians.

1803 Irish patriots throughout the country rebel against Union with Great Britain.

1829 William A. Burt patents his "typographer," an early typewriter.

1849 German rebels in Baden capitulate to the Prussians.

1863 Bill Andeson and his Confederate Bushwackers gut the railway station at Renick, Missouri.

1865 William Booth founds the Salvation Army.

1868 The 14th Amendment is ratified, granting citizenship to African Americans.

1885 Ulysses S. Grant dies of throat cancer at the age of 63.

1894 Japanese troops take over the Korean imperial palace.

1903 The Ford Motor Company sells its first automobile, the Model A.

1944 Soviet troops take Lublin, Poland as the German army retreats.

1962 The Geneva Conference on Laos forbids the United States to invade eastern Laos.

1995 Two astronomers, Alan Hale in New Mexico and Thomas Bopp in Arizona, almost simultaneouly discover a comet.

[dlbpharmd]

July 24

1505 On their way to India, a group of Portuguese explorers sack the city-state of Kilwa.

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

1701 Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac establishes Fort Ponchartrain for France at present-day Detroit, Michigan.

1704 Admiral George Rooke takes Gibraltar from the Spanish.

1766 At Fort Ontario, Canada, Ottawa chief Pontiac and William Johnson sign a peace agreement.

1791 Robespierre expels all Jacobins opposed to the principles of the French Revolution.

1847 The first members of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) arrive in Utah, settling in present-day Salt Lake City.

1862 The eighth president of the United States, Martin Van Buren, dies at the age of 79.

1897 African-American soldiers of the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps arrive in St. Louis, Mo., after completing a 40-day bike ride from Missoula, Montana.

1941 The U.S. government denounces Japanese actions in Indochina.

1942 The Soviet city of Rostov is captured by German troops.

1950 The U.S. Fifth Air Force relocates from Japan to Korea.

1974 The Supreme Court rules that President Richard Nixon must surrender the Watergate tapes.

[Damelon]

July 24, 1959: Nixon, Khrushchev Have a Chat in the Kitchen

1959: Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev engage in the so-called Kitchen Debate, an entertaining parry-and-thrust between the two on ideology, sociology and technology.
Nixon, visiting Moscow, was joined by Khrushchev at the American National Exhibit, where a model U.S. home was on display for the admiration (and presumably the envy) of curious Muscovites. The two leaders were in the kitchen when their informal "debate" ensued.
Nixon pushed the virtues of capitalism while Khrushchev defended communism, but the most interesting aspects of the discussion turned on technology, where the Russians at the time were in many respects equal, if not ahead, of the United States. Both men played their trump cards here, Nixon pointing out the various creature comforts that most Americans took for granted, while Khrushchev trumpeted Soviet military and space achievements. (This was less than two years after Sputnik, remember.)
Although edgy at times, the dialog was generally good-natured and showed the mutual respect each man had for the other. In the end nothing was resolved, other than an agreement that the two societies needed to be more open with the other.
In a deepening Cold War fueled by fear and mistrust, however, that proved to be a futile declaration.

[dlbpharmd]

July 25

326 Emperor Constantine refuses to carry out traditional pagan sacrifices.

1394 Charles VI of France issues a decree for the general expulsion of Jews from France.

1564 Maximillian II becomes emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

1587 Hideyoshi bans Christianity in Japan and orders all Christians to leave.

1759 British forces defeat a French army at Fort Niagara in Canada.

1799 On his way back from Syria, Napoleon Bonaparte defeats the Ottomans at Aboukir, Egypt.

1814 British and American forces fight each other to a standoff at Lundy's Lane, Canada.

1845 China grants Belgium equal trading rights with Britain, France and the United States.

1867 President Andrew Johnson signs an act creating the territory of Wyoming.

1850 Gold is discovered in the Rogue River in Oregon, extending the quest for gold up the Pacific coast.

1861 The Crittenden Resolution, calling for the American Civil War to be fought to preserve the Union and not for slavery, is passed by Congress.

1894 Japanese forces sink the British steamer Kowshing which was bringing Chinese reinforcements to Korea.

1909 French aviator Louis Bleriot becomes the first man to fly across the English Channel in an airplane.

1914 Russia declares that it will act to protect Serbian sovereignty.

1924 Greece announces the deportation of 50,000 Armenians.

1934 Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss is shot and killed by Nazis.

1941 The U.S. government freezes Japanese and Chinese assets.

1943 Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini is overthrown in a coup.

1944 Allied forces begin the breakthrough of German lines in Normandy.

1978 The first test-tube baby, Louis Brown, is born in Oldham, England.

[Avatar]

1971 - Dr Christiaan Barnard transplants two lungs and a heart into a man in Cape Town, South Africa, and the operation is described as successful.

--A

[dlbpharmd]

July 26

657 Mu'awiyan defeats Caliph Ali in the Battle of Siffin in Mesopotamia.

1526 Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon and colonists leave Santo Domingo for Florida.

1529 Francisco Pizarro receives a royal warrant to "discover and conquer" Peru.

1758 British forces capture France's Fortress of Louisbourg after a seven-week siege.

1759 The French relinquish Fort Ticonderoga in New York to the British under General Jeffrey Amherst.

1775 The Continental Congress establishes a postal system for the colonies with Benjamin Franklin as the first postmaster general.

1790 An attempt at a counter-revolution in France is put down by the National Guard at Lyons.

1794 The French defeat an Austrian army at the Battle of Fleurus, France.

1830 King Charles X of France issues five ordinances limiting the political and civil rights of citizens.

1847 Liberia becomes the first African colony to become an independent state.

1848 The French army suppresses the Paris uprising.

1886 William Gladstone is replaced by Lord Salisbury as Prime Minister of England.

1918 Britain's top war ace, Edward Mannock, is shot down by ground fire on the Western Front.

1920 The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified.

1948 In an Executive Order, President Harry Truman calls for the end of discrimination and segregation in the U.S. armed forces.

[Damelon]

July 26, 1989: First Indictment Under Computer Fraud Act

1989: Robert Tappan Morris, a Cornell University graduate student, is the first person to be indicted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Morris was prosecuted for creating and releasing the Morris worm, generally recognized as the first computer worm to infect the internet. He released the worm from computers at MIT in order to keep the light of suspicion away from Cornell.
Morris said later that his intentions were purely intellectual, that he created the worm in an attempt to measure the size of the internet. A design flaw in the worm's delivery system, however, caused some infected computers to keep replicating the worm until they became unusable. A number of systems were disabled by the Morris worm.
Damage estimates from the worm's impact vary greatly, as do the actual number of systems and individual computers that were affected. But the numbers applied to Morris are concrete: After some plea bargaining, he was sentenced to three years probation and fined $10,000.
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act has been amended several times (and folded into the Patriot Act) since its inception and Morris' activities would no doubt bring down a much harsher sentence today.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in any case, was forgiving and bore Morris no grudge. He is currently an associate professor at MIT.

[Avatar]

*shakes head* Damn. Less than 20 years ago.

--A

[Damelon]

July 27, 1866: Trans-Atlantic Cable Connects Old World to New

1866: After years of planning, development and more than a few snafus, the trans-Atlantic cable is successfully laid and put into operation.
Telegraphic communications was in its infancy -- it had only been 22 years since Samuel Morse made his historic transmission between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore -- when the cable, stretching from Follhummerum Bay in Ireland to the Newfoundland village of Heart's Content, crackled to life.
But it was an eventful 22 years. The idea of a trans-Atlantic cable had been proposed by many when it seemed technologically feasible, but the name of Cyrus Field, a wealthy New York merchant who eventually arranged for funding of the project, is the name that pops up most frequently in its early history.
Field came on board in 1854, a year after the USS Dolphin completed a 1,600-mile sounding between Newfoundland and Ireland that revealed a smooth plateau, ideal for laying cable. Field convened a number of investors and the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Co. was formed.
The cable was almost laid in 1855, but bad weather at sea and the refusal of a ship's captain to follow orders scuttled that attempt. Cable was successfully laid across Cabot Strait in 1856, completing a linkup between New York and Newfoundland. The cable was a third of the way home.
Both the British and American governments agreed to supply additional funding for the project, and in 1857 success was nearly at hand when cable being laid by the USS Niagara snapped in heavy seas. Hundreds of miles of cable were lost and that, coupled with a bank collapse in the United States, caused the project to be shelved again.
More disruptions followed, including an interlude known as the Civil War, which soured relations between the United States and Great Britain when London openly sympathized with the Confederacy.
By 1866, however, the war was over and a new ship, the 693-foot-long Great Eastern, was ready to lay cable. Weighing anchor after the shore end of the new cable was laid at Follhummerum Bay, the Great Eastern made a smooth passage to Heart's Content and the old world was joined to the new on July 27.

[dlbpharmd]

July 27

1214 At the Battle of Bouvines in France, Philip Augustus of France defeats John of England.

1245 Frederick II is deposed by a council at Lyons, which found him guilty of sacrilege.

1586 Sir Walter Raleigh returns to England from Virginia.

1663 British Parliament passes a second Navigation Act, requiring all goods bound for the colonies be sent in British ships from British ports.

1689 Government forces defeat the Scottish Jacobites at the Battle of Killiecrankie.

1777 The Marquis of Lafayette arrives in New England to help fight the British.

1778 British and French fleets fight to a standoff in the first Battle of Ushant.

1793 Robespierre becomes a member of the Committee of Public Safety.

1861 President Abraham Lincoln replaces General Irwin McDowell with General George B. McClellen as head of the Army of the Potomac.

1909 Orville Wright sets a world record for staying aloft in an airplane--one hour, 12 minutes and 40 seconds.

1914 British troops invade the streets of Dublin, Ireland, and begin to disarm Irish rebels.

1921 Canadians Sir Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolate insulin at the University of Toronto.

1944 U.S. troops complete the liberation of Guam.

1953 Representatives of the United Nations, Korea and China sign an armistice at Panmunjon, Korea.

1964 President Lyndon Johnson sends an additional 5,000 advisers to South Vietnam.

1993 Israeli guns and aircraft pound southern Lebanon in reprisal for rocket attacks by Hezbollah guerrillas.

[dlbpharmd]

July 28

1540 Henry VIII of England marries Catherine Howard.

1615 French explorer Samuel de Champlain discovers Lake Huron on his seventh voyage to the New World.

1794 Robespierre is beheaded in France.

1808 Sultan Mustapha of the Ottoman Empire is deposed and his cousin Mahmud II gains the throne.

1835 King Louis Napoleon of France survives an assassination attempt.

1863 Confederate John Mosby begins a series of attacks against General Meade's Army of the Potomac.

1868 The 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees citizenship to all those born or naturalized in the United States, is adopted.

1898 Spain, through the offices of the French embassy in Washington, D.C., requests peace terms in its war with the United States.

1914 Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, beginning World War I.

1920 Pancho Villa surrenders to the Mexican government.

1932 The Bonus Army of impoverished World War I veterans is violently pushed out of Washington, D.C.

1941 A Japanese army lands on the coast of Cochin, China (modern day Vietnam).

1945 A B-25 bomber crashes into the Empire State Building in New York City, killing 13 people.

1965 President Lyndon Johnson sends an additional 50,000 troops to South Vietnam.