On July 19th...

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1510 Thirty-eight Jews were burned at the stake in Berlin, Prussia.

1543 Lady Mary Boleyn, mistress of King Henry VIII of England, died.

1545 King Henry VIII's flagship Mary Rose sank off Portsmouth, England, killing 73 persons.

1553 15-year-old Lady Jane Grey was deposed as England's Queen after 9 days.

1569 Albert Frederick became Duke of Prussia.

1702 Swedish troops under King Charles XII occupied Krakow.

1801 Robert John Walker, U.S. Senator and Secretary of the Treasury, was born.

1814 Industrialist Samuel Colt was born.
1814 Matthew Flinders, the first man to circumnavigate Australia, died.

1817 Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke, American Civil War nurse and veterans' advocate, was born.

1824 Agustin de Iturbide, the first Emperor of Mexico, was executed by firing squad.

1834 Painter Edgar Degas was born.

1848 The first women's rights convention in the United States met at Seneca Falls, New York.

1819 Charles Horace Mayo, co-founder of the Mayo Clinic, was born.

1866 Tennessee became the first state to ratify the 14th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.

1867 The U. S. Congress passed the Third Reconstruction Act over President Andrew Johnson's veto.

1870 France declared war on Prussia.

1873 Samuel Wilberforce, English bishop, died.

1877 Spencer Gore won the first ever men's singles championship at Wimbledon.

1884 William Renshaw won the men's singles championship at Wimbledon.

1899 The National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers was formed.

1903 Maurice Garin won the first Tour de France.

1909 Cleveland shortstop Neal Ball executed an unassisted triple play.

1912 A meteorite weighing approximately 420 pounds exploded over Holbrook, Arizona.

1915 The Washington Senators stole a record 8 bases in one inning (1st) during their 11-4 win over the Cleveland Indians.

1918 German armies retreated across the Marne River in France.

1922 U. S. Senator George McGovern was born.

1925 Ottavio Bottecchia won the Tour de France.

1928 King Fuad of Egypt seized power and disbanded the parliament.

1941 The first U. S. Army flying school for black cadets was dedicated at Tuskegee, Alabama.
1941 Tom and Jerry make their first apperance under their own names in the cartoon "The Midnight Snack."
1941 Singer Vikkie Carr was born.

1945 The U. S. Navy submarine Cod saved 51 sailors from a Dutch submarine.

1946 Tennis player Ilie Nastase was born.

1947 Assassins broke into a meeting of the Executive Council of Burma and killed U Aung San, architect of the state, and seven other councilors.
1947 Guitarist Brian May was born.

1949 Laos became an associated state within the French Union.

1952 The 15th Olympic Games opened in Helsinki, Finland.
1952 Fausto Coppi won the Tour de France.

1957 The first U.S. rocket with an atomic warhead was fired at the Nevada proving grounds.
1957 Derek Ibbotson set a new world record for the mile of 3:57.2.
1957 Twenty-nine persons were killed and 67 injured in a train derailment at Bollène, France.

1958 Charly Gaul won the Tour de France.

1960 At least 33 miners were killed when a fire broke out in an iron mine at Salzgitter, Germany.
1960 Eleven sailors were killed when two U.S. Navy destroyers collided in heavy fog off Newport Beach, California.

1963 Joseph A. Walker set a world aircraft altitude record of nearly 67 miles in the X-15 research plane.

1964 Bobby Nichols won the PGA Championship.

1965 Animal trainer Clyde Beatty died.
1965 Syngman Rhee, the first President of the Republic of Korea, died.

1967 A Boeing 727 collided with a twin-engined Cessna over Hendersonville, North Carolina, killing 82 persons.

1969 Apollo 11 went into Moon orbit.
1969 Police reported that a young woman had been killed when a car driven by Senator Edward Kennedy drove off a bridge near Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.

1970 Eddy Merckx won the Tour de France.

1971 A military coup led by Major Hashem al-Atta overthrew the government of Sudan.

1975 Country singer Lefty Frizzell died.

1976 Sagarmatha National Park was established in Nepal.
1976 The rock group Deep Purple disbanded.

1977 Floods killed 76 persons in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

1979 Sandinistas overthrew Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza Debayle.
1979 Two supertankers collided off Tobago, causing a 260,000-ton oil spill.

1980 The 22nd Olympic Games opened in Moscow, Russia.

1981 Bill Rogers won the British Open.
1981 Bernard Hinault won the Tour de France.

1982 The Bolivian government resigned.

1984 Lynn Rippelmeyer became the first woman to captain a 747 across the Atlantic.

1985 Italy's Val di StavaDam collapsed, killing 268 persons.
1985 Christa McAuliffe was chosen as the first teacher to fly aboard the Space Shuttle.

1986 Tim Witherspoon KO'd Frank Bruno in the 11th round to win the heavyweight boxing title.

1987 Nick Faldo won the British Open.

1989 A United Airlines DC-10 crashed at Sioux City, Iowa, killing 112 persons.

1990 The Richard Nixon Library opened in Yorba Linda, California.

1993 U. S. President Bill Clinton fired FBI Director William Sessions.

1994 A bomb explosion at Alas Airlines in Colon, Panama, killed 21 persons.

1996 The 26th Olympic Games opened in Atlanta, Georgia.

1993 Mark O'Meara won the British Open.

2009 Stewart Cink won the British Open.

2013 A suicide bomber killed 20 persons in Diyala, Iraq.

2014 Actor James Garner died.

2016 Film and television director Garry Marshall died.

2017 U. S. Senator John McCain was diagnosed with brain cancer.

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This page was last updated on July 18, 2018.