On July 29th...

links will open in a new window

1567 James VI was crowned King of Scotland at Stirling.

1634 A Dutch fleet under Johannes van Walbeeck landed on Curacao.

1644 Pope Urban VIII died.

1653 Librarian and scholar Gabriel Naudé died.

1676 Nathaniel Bacon was declared a rebel for assembling frontiersmen to protect settlers from Indians.

1773 The first schoolhouse west of the Allegheny Mountains was completed at Schoenbrunn, Ohio.

1805 Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America, was born.

1824 Author Alexandre Dumas the Younger was born.

1833 William Wilberforce, British statesman and crusader against slavery, died.

1836 The Arc de Triomphe was inaugurated.

1858 The Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed between the United States and Japan, opening Japanese ports to trade.

1864 Confederate spy Belle Boyd was arrested by Union troops.

1869 Novelist Booth Tarkington was born.

1874 Major Walter Copton Wingfield patented a portable tennis court.

1877 William Beebe, explorer, naturalist, and writer, was born.

1883 Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was born.

1890 Painter Vincent van Gogh died.

1899 The First Hague Convention was signed.

1900 King Umberto I of Italy was assassinated by Italian-born anarchist Gaetano Bresci.

1905 Actress Clara Bow was born.
1905 Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General of the United Nations, was born.

1907 Sir Robert Baden-Powell formed the Boy Scouts in England.
1907 Attorney Melvin Belli was born.

1914 The first transcontinental phone link was made between New York City and San Francisco.

1920 Mexican rebel Pancho Villa surrendered.

1921 Adolf Hitler became leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

1927 The world's first iron lung was installed at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.

1928 Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie was released.

1932 Nancy Landon Kassebaum, the second woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate in her own right, was born.

1936 U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole was born.

1937 Businessman Charles Schwab was born.

1938 The comic strip "Dennis the Menace" debuted.
1938 Television journalist Peter Jennings was born.

1953 Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns was born.

1957 The International Atomic Energy Agency was created by the United Nations.
1957 "Tonight Show," with Jack Paar, premiered.

1958 The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created by Congress.

1965 The Beatles' movie Help premiered.

1966 Country singer Martina McBride was born.

1967 An accident aboard the USS Forrestal killed 134 men and injured 161 others.

1972 Actor Wil Wheaton was born.

1974 The Episcopal Church ordained its first female priests.
1974 Singer Mama Cass died.

1978 Pioneer 11 transmitted images of Saturn and its rings.

1981 Prince Charles of Great Britain married Diana Spencer.

1982 The Russian Space Station Salyut 6 was deliberately de-orbited.

1983 Actor David Niven died.

1984 Conductor Fred Waring died.

1994 Nobel Prize-winning chemist Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin died.

1988 The last Playboy Club in the United States (in Lansing, Michigan) closed.

1995 The Carolina Panthers beat the Jacksonville Jaguars in their first NFL exhibition game 20-14.

1998 Choreographer Jerome Robbins died.

2007 Talk show host Tom Snyder died.

Questions or comments about this page?

This page was last updated on July 12, 2017.