On July 15th...

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1099 The city of Jerusalem was captured and plundered by Christian forces during the First Crusade.

1207 King John of England expelled Canterbury monks for supporting Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

1291 Rudolf I, King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor, died.

1410 The Battle of Grunwald was fought.

1573 Architect Inigo Jones was born.

1606 Rembrandt, Dutch artist, was born.

1662 The Royal Society was chartered in London, England.

1741 A landing party commanded by Alexei Chirikov became the first Europeans to set foot in Alaska.

1783 Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, Indian businessman and philanthropist, was born.

1779 American troops under General Anthony Wayne captured Fort Stony Point, New York.

1794 Sylvester Graham, inventor of graham flour, was born.

1795 "Marseillaise" became the French national anthem.

1796 Author Thomas Bulfinch was born.

1799 The Rosetta Stone was found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard.

1806 Zebulon Pike embarked on an exploration of the American West and Southwest.

1815 Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered to Captain Frederick Maitland of the HMS Bellerophon at Rochefort.

1823 The Basilica of Saint Paul in Rome, Italy, was destroyed by fire.

1840 Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia signed the Quadruple Alliance.

1856 Natal was formed as a British colony separate from Cape Colony.

1869 Margarine was patented by Hippolye Méga-Mouriès for use by the French Navy.
1869 William T. G. Morton, one of the first to use ether as an anesthetic, died.

1870 Georgia became the last Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union.
1870 Manitoba became a province of Canada.

1876 St. Louis' George W. Bradley pitched the first ever recorded baseball no-hitter, against Hartford.

1883 "Circus midget" Tom Thumb died.

1895 Charlotte Cooper and Wilfred Bradley won their respective singles championships at Wimbledon.

1898 Camillo Golgi discovered what is now known as the Golgi Apparatus (a delicate network inside cells essential for the transmission and reception of information between cells).

1904 The first Buddhist temple in the United States was established in Los Angeles, California.

1912 The British National Health Insurance Act went into effect.
1912 Jim Thorpe scored a record 8,413 points to win the decathlon gold medal at the Stockholm Olympics.

1915 Musician Frankie Yankovic was born.

1916 Boeing Company was formed (as Pacific Aero) by William Boeing in Seattle, Washington.

1917 Noor Mohammad Taraki, President of Afghanistan, was born.

1918 The Second Battle of the Marne began.

1919 Nobel Prize-winning chemist Emil Fischer died.

1922 Gene Sarazen won the U. S. Open.

1923 The Italian Parliament accepted a new constitution.
1923 Bobby Jones won the U. S. Open.

1927 Austrian police killed 89 protesters in Vienna.
1927 Bobby Jones won the British Open.

1928 Nicolas Frantz won the Tour de France.

1929 The first airport hotel opened in Oakland, California.

1932 U. S. President Herbert Hoover cut his salary by 15%.

1933 Wiley Post took off on what would become a record round-the-world solo flight.

1934 Continental Airlines began operations.

1935 Football player Alex Karras was born.

1937 Buchenwald Concentration Camp opened.

1939 Clara Adams became the first woman to complete a round-the-world flight.

1940 The first betatron was placed in operation, at Urbana, Illinois.
1940 Robert Wadlow, the world's tallest person ever, died.

1944 Actor Jan-Michael Vincent was born.

1945 Byron Nelson won the PGA Championship.

1946 The British North Borneo transferred its rights to modern-day Sabah to the British Crown.
1946 Singer Linda Ronstadt was born.

1948 John J. Pershing, commanding General of the U.S. Army during World War I, died.

1949 Czech tennis stars Jaroslav Drobny and Vladimir Cernik defected to the United States.

1950 Columnist Arianna Huffington was born.

1951 Wrestler Jesse Ventura was born.

1952 The first transatlantic helicopter flight began.

1953 Jean-Bertrand Aristide, two-time President of Haiti, was born.

1958 U. S. Marines landed in Lebanon in response to formal requests made by Lebanese President Camille Chamoun.
1958 South Africa resumed full participation in the United Nations.

1959 U. S. President Dwight Eisenhower designated Washington, D.C.'s, new airport as Dulles International Airport in honor of the late John Foster Dulles.

1960 Japanese Premier Nobusuke Kishi resigned, one day after being wounded in an assassination attempt.
1960 The first U. N. troops arrived in the Congo.
15 Gabon was granted full sovereignty in an accord signed at Paris.

1961 Arnold Palmer won the British Open.
1961 Actor Forest Whitaker was born.

1962 Jacques Anquetil won the Tour de France.

1965 King Constantine of Greece dismissed Premier George Papandreau and replaced him with George Athanasiadis-Novas.

1967 Roberto De Vicenzo won the British Open.
1967 Adam Savage, co-host of Mythbusters, was born.

1968 "One Life to Live" premiered on ABC-TV.
1968 Commercial air service between the United States and the Soviet Union began.

1972 Pioneer 10 became the first man-made object to pass through the Asteroid Belt.
1972 Lee Trevino won the British Open.

1973 John Paul Getty III was kidnapped in Rome, Italy.

1974 Archbishop Makarios, President of Cyprus, was ousted by the military.

1976 A school bus carrying 26 children and a driver was taken hostage in California.

1978 Jack Nicklaus won the British Open.

1979 Morarji R. Desai resigned as Prime Minister of India.
1979 Andrew Young resigned as United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
1979 Jerilyn Britz won the U. S. Women's Open.

1983 Armenian extremists exploded a bomb in Orly, France, killing 8 persons and wounding 54 others.

1984 Hollis Stacy won the U. S. Women's Open.

1985 Deborah Carthy-Deu, Miss Puerto Rico, was crowned Miss Universe.

1990 Betsy King won the U. S. Women's Open.

1991 Game show host Bert Convy died.

1992 Hammer DeRoburt, the first President of Nauru, died.

1997 Fashion designer Gianni Versace was murdered by Andrew Cunanan.

1999 The inaugural game at the Seattle Mariners' Safeco Field was played.

2012 A bush crash in Parasi, Nepal, killed 39 pilgrims.

2013 Thirteen persons were killed by a car bomb in Deir Atiyah, Syria.
2013 Eighteen persons were killed and 47 others injured in a riot following a soccer match in Indonesia.

2014 A train derailment near Moscow, Russia, killed 20 persons and injured 100 others.

2016 About 300 people were killed during a failed military coup in Turkey.

2017 Garbiñe Muguruza won the women's singles championship at Wimbledon.
2017 Actor Martin Landau died.

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This page was last updated on July 15, 2018.