On July 14th...

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Bastille Day (France)

1771 Mission San Antonio de Padua was founded in California.

1789 The French Revolution began when Parisian citizens stormed the Bastille.

1791 Chemist Joseph Priestley was driven out of Birmingham, England.

1798 The first direct U. S. tax on dwellings, land and slaves was implemented.
1798 The Sedition Act, prohibiting "false, scandalous and malicious" writing against the U. S. government, was passed.

1832 Opium was exempted from federal tariff duties.

1834 Painter James Whistler was born.

1850 The first public demonstration of ice made by refrigeration was conducted.

1853 New Zealand held its first general election.
1853 Commodore Matthew C. Perry "requested" trade relations with Japan.

1857 Frederick L. Maytag, founder of Maytag Corporation, was born.

1863 The Battle of Falling Waters (Maryland) was fought.

1864 Gold was discovered at Helena, Montana.

1865 The Matterhorn was ascended for the first time.
1865 Arthur Capper, publisher and U.S. Senator, was born.

1868 A tape measure enclosed in a circular case was patented by A. J. Fellows.

1870 The U. S. Congress granted Mary Todd Lincoln a life pension of $3,000 a year.

1881 Billy the Kid was gunned down by Pat Garrett.

1885 Sarah E. Goode became the first black woman to receive a U. S. patent, for a folding cabinet bed.

1891 John T. Smith patented corkboard.

1904 Playwright Anton Pavlovich Chekhov died.

1907 Chemist William Henry Perkin died.

1910 Cartoonist William Hanna was born.

1912 Folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie was born.

1913 Gerald Rudolph Ford, 38th President of the United States, was born.

1914 Robert Goddard received a patent for a rocket fueled by gasoline and liquid nitrous oxide.

1916 Golfer Claude Harmon was born.

1918 Film director Ingmar Bergman was born.

1921 Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted of killing their shoe company's paymaster.

1927 Television journalist John Chancellor was born.

1930 Actress Polly Bergen was born.

1932 Football player Rosie Grier was born.

1940 Lithuania became the Lithuanian SSR.

1944 American politician Joseph L. Bristow died.

1945 The battleship USS South Dakota became the first U. S. ship to bombard Japan.

1946 Dr. Benjamin Spock's Common Sense Book of Baby & Child Care was published.

1949 The Soviet Union exploded its first atom bomb.

1953 George Washington Carver National Monument was dedicated in Missouri.

1958 Iraqi Army officers overthrew the monarchy of King Faisal; the king, Crown Prince Abdul Illah, and Premier Nuri as Said were killed.

1959 The U.S. Navy launched the first nuclear-powered surface vessel, Long Beach, at Quincy, Massachusetts.

1960 Fire swept the Guatemala City (Guatemala) Hospital for the Insane, killing 225 persons and injuring about 300.
1960 Actress Jane Lynch was born.

1965 Mariner IV flew by Mars.
1965 American politician Adlai Stevenson died.

1966 Richard Speck raped and killed 8 nurses in a Chicago dormitory.

1967 U. S. Congressman Patrick Joseph Kennedy was born.

1969 The United States $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills were officially withdrawn from circulation.
1969 A freight train crashed into a passenger train in Jaipur, India, killing 85 Hindu pilgrims.
1969 Honduran planes carried out strafing runs over El Salvador.
1969 The film Easy Rider was released.

1970 Actress Missy Gold was born.

1972 Jean Westwood became the first woman chosen to head the Democratic National Committee.

1977 The U. S. House of Representatives established a permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

1983 Ninetendo released the game Mario Bros. in Japan.

1986 Jane Geddes won the U. S. Women's Open Golf Championship.

1987 Taiwan ended 37 years of martial law.

1991 Meg Mallon won the U. S. Women's Open Golf Championship.

1994 A gas explosion at an old age home in Milan, Italy, killed 27 persons.

2008 The film The Dark Knight premiered.

2014 The Church of England voted in favor of allowing women to become bishops.

2016 Mohamed Lahoualej Bouhlei drove a truck through and fired a gun into a crowd of revelers in Nice, France, killing 84 and injuring another 434.

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This page was last updated on September 02, 2018.