July 20 is the Expression
error: unrecognised punctuation character "{"th day of the year Expression error: unrecognised punctuation character "{" in the
Gregorian calendar. There are Expression error: unrecognised punctuation character
"{" days remainingExpression error: unrecognised punctuation character "{".
Events
- 514 - Pope Hormisdas assumes the papacy of the
Roman Catholic Church.
- 1304 - Wars of Scottish Independence:
Fall of Stirling Castle - King Edward I
of England takes the last rebel stronghold of the war.
- 1402 - Ottoman-Timurid Wars: Battle of Ankara -
Timur, ruler of Timurid Empire, defeated forces of the
Ottoman Empire sultan Bayezid I.
- 1656 - Swedish forces under the command of King
Charles X Gustav defeats the forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the Battle of
Warsaw.
- 1712 - The Riot Act takes effect in Great Britain.
- 1738 - North America: French explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de la Vérendrye reaches the western
shore of Lake Michigan.
- 1810 - Citizens of Bogotá, New Granada declare independence from Spain.
- 1833 - An anti-Mormon mob in Independence, Missouri, destroys the printing press for
the Book of Commandments.*
- 1861 - American Civil War: The Congress of the Confederate States of
America begins sitting in Richmond, Virginia.
- 1864 - American Civil War: Battle of Peachtree
Creek - Near Atlanta, Georgia, Confederate forces led by General
John Bell Hood unsuccessfully attack Union troops under General William T. Sherman.
- 1866 - Austro-Prussian War: Battle of Lissa - The Austrian Navy , led by
Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff, defeats the
Italian Navy near the island of Vis in the
Adriatic Sea.
- 1871 - British Columbia joins the confederation of
Canada.
- 1872 - The US Patent Office
awards the first patent for wireless telegraphy to
Mahlon Loomis.
- 1877 - Rioting in Baltimore, Maryland by Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad workers is put down by the state militia, resulting in nine deaths.
- 1881 - Indian Wars:Sioux
Chief Sitting Bull leads the last of his fugitive
people in surrender to US troops at Fort
Buford, North Dakota
- 1885 - The Football Association legalises
professionalism in football under pressure from
the British Football Association.
- 1894 - The troops sent by Grover Cleveland to
Chicago to end the Pullman Strike
are recalled.
- 1903 - Ford Motor Company shipped its first
car.
- 1907 - A train wreck on the Pere Marquette Railroad near Salem,
Michigan kills thirty and injures seventy more.
- 1916 - World War I: In Armenia, Russian troops capture Gumiskhanek.
- 1916 - American cricketer, John Barton King plays his
last match for the Philadelphian cricket team
- 1917 - World War I: The Corfu Declaration, which
leads to the creation of the post-war Kingdom of
Yugoslavia, is signed by the Yugoslav Committee and Kingdom of Serbia.
- 1918 - World War I: German troops cross the Marne.
- 1921 - Air mail service begins between New York City and San Francisco.
- 1921 - Congresswoman Alice Mary Robertson became the first woman to preside
over the US House of Representatives.
- 1922 - The League of Nations awards mandates of
Togoland to France and Tanganyika to the United Kingdom.
- 1924 - Teheran, Persia comes
under martial law after the American vice consul,
Robert Imbrie, is killed by a religious mob enraged by rumors he had poisoned a fountain and
killed several people.
- 1926 - A convention of the Methodist Church votes to allow
women to become priests.
- 1928 - The government of Hungary issues a decree ordering
Gypsies to end their nomadic ways, settle permanently in one place, and subject themselves
to the same laws and taxes as other Hungarians.
- 1929 - Soviet troops attempt to cross the
Amur River into Manchuria near Blagoveschensk as tensions mount between the Soviet Union and the
Republic of China.
- 1932 - In Washington, D.C., police fire
tear gas on World War I veterans part of the
Bonus Expeditionary Force who attempt to march to the White
House.
- 1932 - Crowds in the capitals of Bolivia and Paraguay
demand their governments declare war on the other after fighting on their border.
- 1933 - Vice-Chancellor of Germany
Franz von Papen and Vatican Cardinal
Eugenio Pacelli sign a concordat on behalf of their
respective nations.
- 1933 - In London, 500,000 march against anti-Semitism.
- 1933 - Germany: Two-hundred Jewish merchants are arrested in
Nuremberg and paraded through the streets.
- 1934 - Labor unrest in the US, as police in Minneapolis fire upon striking truck drivers, wounding
fifty; Seattle police led by the mayor police fire tear gas on and club 2,000 striking longshoremen, and the
governor of Oregon calls out the National Guard to break a strike on the
Portland docks.
- 1935 - Switzerland: A Royal Dutch
Airlines plane en route from Milan to Frankfurt crashes
into a Swiss mountain, killing thirteen.
- 1935 - Riots between Muslims and Sikhs over a mosque in
Lahore, India leave eleven dead.
- 1936 - The Montreux Convention is signed in Switzerland, authorizing Turkey to fortify the Dardanelles and Bosphorus but guaranteeing free passage to ships of all
nations in peacetime.
- 1937 - Two black men accused of stabbing a policeman are taken by a mob from the county jail in
Tallahassee, Florida and lynched.
- 1938 - The Justice Department
files suit in New York City against the motion picture
industry charging violations of anti-trust law. The case would eventually result in a
break-up of the industry in 1948.
- 1940 - Denmark leaves the League of Nations.
- 1940 - US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Hatch Act of 1939, limiting political activity by Federal government employees.
- 1941 - Soviet leader Joseph Stalin consolidates the Commissariats of Home Affairs and National Security to form the
NKVD and names Lavrenti Beria its chief.
- 1942 - World War II: Red
Army troops take bridgeheads over the Don
River near Voronezh.
- 1942 - World War II: The first unit of the Women's Army Corps begins training in
Des Moines, Iowa.
- 1943 - World War II: American and Canadian troops conquer Enna on
Sicily.
- 1944 - World War II: Adolf Hitler survives an
assassination attempt (known as the July 20 Plot) led by German Army Colonel
Claus von Stauffenberg.
- 1944 - World War II: American troops land on Guam near Port
Apra.
- 1944 - Fifty are hurt in rioting in front of the presidential palace in Mexico City.
- 1945 - The US Congress approves the
Bretton Woods Agreement.
- 1946 - World War II: The US Congress's
Pearl Harbor Committee says Franklin D. Roosevelt
was completely blameless for the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor and calls for a unified command structure in the armed forces.
- 1947 - Police in Burma arrest former Prime Minister
U Saw and 19 others on charges of assassinating Prime Minister U Aung
San and seven members of his cabinet.
- 1947 - The Viceroy of India says the people of the Northwest Frontier Province overwhelmingly voted the previous day to join Pakistan rather than India.
- 1948 - US President Harry S. Truman issues a peacetime
military draft in the US amid increasing
tensions with the Soviet Union.
- 1948 - In New York City, twelve leaders of the Communist Party USA are indicted under the Smith Act including
William Z. Foster and Gus Hall.
- 1949 - Israel and Syria sign a
truce to end their nineteen-month war.
- 1950 - Cold War: In Philadelphia, Harry Gold pleads guilty to spying for
the Soviet Union by passing secrets from atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs.
- 1951 - King Abdullah I of Jordan is assassinated
by a Palestinian while attending Friday prayers in Jerusalem.
- 1953 - The United Nations Economic
and Social Council votes to make UNICEF a permanent agency.
- 1954 - Germany: Otto John,
head of West Germany's secret service, defects to East
Germany.
- 1954 - At Geneva, Switzerland, an armistice is signed that
ends fighting in Vietnam and divides the country along the 17th parallel.
- 1958 - Twenty-six are dead in an explosion at a military base near Kokin Breg, Yugoslavia.
- 1959 - The Organization for European Economic Cooperation admits
Spain.
- 1960 - Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) elects Sirimavo Bandaranaike Prime Minister, the world's first elected female head of government.
- 1960 - The Polaris missile is successfully launched from a submarine, the
USS George Washington, for the first time.
- 1960 - Belgium defends its intervention in the Congo to the United Nations Security
Council while the government of the Congo appeals to the Soviet Union to send troops
to push back the Belgians. The governments of the US and France and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization warn the Soviets to stay out of
the dispute.
- 1960 - The head of the Physics Department at the Israel Institute of Technology, Kurt Sitte, is
arrested for espionage.
- 1961 - French military forces break the
Tunisian siege of Bizerte.
- 1962 - Earthquakes in Colombia kill 40.
- 1964 - Vietnam War: Viet Cong forces attack the capital of Dinh
Tuong Province, Cai Be, killing 11 South Vietnamese
military personnel and 40 civilians (30 of which are children).
- 1965 - In Hayneville, Alabama, two
civil rights protesters, one a priest and the other a seminarian, are shot by a deputy sheriff. The seminarian dies of his wounds.
- 1965 - Turkish prime minister Suat Hayri Urguplu
returns from a visit to Moscow and announces the Soviet
Union will provide aid to his country.
- 1969 - Apollo Program: Apollo 11successfully lands the first man on the Moon.
- 1969 - Cease fire announced between Honduras and El
Salvador, 6 days after the beginning of the "Football War"
- 1971 - The Soviet Union says it will support the People's Republic of China's admission to the United
Nations
- 1973 - The US Senate passes the War Powers Act.
- 1973 - Vietnam War: In testimony by Assistant Secretary of Defense Jerry Friedheim to the
US Senate Committee on Armed Services, the
US Defense Department admits it lied to US Congress about bombing Cambodia .
- 1973 - Seventy-three government officials and military officers are charged with conspiracy to overthrow the Greek government.
- 1973 - Palestianian terrorists hijack a
Japan Airlines jet en route from Amsterdam to
Japan and force it down in Dubai.
- 1973 - First coast-to-coast black-owned and operated radio network: The National
Black Network (NBN) begins operations.
- 1974 - Turkish occupation of Cyprus: Forces from
Turkey invade Cyprus after a "coup d' etat", organised by the
dictator of Greece, against president Makarios. NATO's Council praises the US and the United Kingdom for attempts to settle the
dispute. Syria and Egypt put their militaries on alert.
- 1975 - India expels three reporters from The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and
Newsweek because they refused to sign a pledge to abide by government censorship.
- 1976 - The Viking 1 lander successfully lands on
Mars.
- 1976 - Vietnam War: The US military completes its troop withdrawal from Thailand.
- 1977 - Johnstown is hit by a flash flood that kills eighty and causes $350 million in damage.
- 1977 - The Central Intelligence Agency releases documents under the
Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in
mind control experiments.
- 1980 - The United Nations Security
Council votes 14-0 that member states should not recognise Jerusalem as
the capital of Israel.
- 1982 - Hyde Park and Regents Park
bombings: The Provisional IRA detonates two bombs in Hyde Park and Regents
Park in central London, killing eight soldiers, wounding forty-seven people,
and leading to the deaths of seven horses.
- 1983 - The Israeli cabinet votes to withdraw troops from
Beirut but to remain in southern Lebanon.
- 1984 - Officials of the Miss America pageant ask
Vanessa Lynn Williams to quit after Penthouse published nude photos of her.
- 1985 - The government of Aruba passes legislation to secede from
the Netherlands Antilles.
- 1986 - In South Africa, police fire tear gas into a church service for families of those held under the government's emergency
decrees.
- 1986 - In Cambridge, Gerald
Amirault of the Fells Acres Day Care Center is convicted of
molesting nine children.
- 1987 - UN Security Council Resolution 598, condemning the Iran-Iraq
War and demanding cease-fire, is unanimously adopted.
- 1989 - Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's show opens at Washington, D.C.'s
Project for the Arts after the Smithsonian Institution's Corcoran Gallery cancels it.
- 1989 - Burma's ruling junta puts opposition leader Daw Aung
San Suu Kyi under house arrest.
- 1990 - Haiti asks the US to send observers to monitor its upcoming elections.
- 1990 - A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb explodes at the
International Stock Exchange in London.
- 1992 - Václav Havel resigns as president of
Czechoslovakia.
- 1992 - A TU-154 cargo plane crashes in the suburbs of Tbilisi, Georgia, killing forty.
- 1994 - Israel's Shimon
Peres visits Jordan, the highest ranking Israeli official to do so
- 1994 - Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's Fragment Q1 hits Jupiter.
- 1995 - The Regents of the University of
California vote to end all affirmative action in the UC system by
1997.
- 1996 - In Spain, an ETA bomb at an
airport kills 35
- 1998 - Two hundred aid workers from CARE International,
Doctors Without Borders and other aid groups leave Afghanistan on orders of the Taliban.
- 1999 - Falun Gong is officially banned and defined as an
"evil cult" (xiejiao) by the Chinese government, and a large-scale
persecution of its practitioners is launched.
- 2000 - The leaders of Salt Lake City's
bid to win the 2002 Winter
Olympics are indicted by a federal grand jury for bribery, fraud, and racketeering.
- 2000 - In Zimbabwe, Parliament opens its new session and seats opposition members for the
first time in a decade.
- 2000 - Terrorist Carlos the Jackal sues France in
the European Court of Human Rights for allegedly torturing him.
- 2001 - The London Stock Exchange goes
public.
- 2001 - Italy: The 27th Annual G8 summit opens in Genoa. An Italian protester in Genoa, Carlo Giuliani, is shot by
police.
- 2002 - South America: A fire in a discotheque in Lima, Peru kills over twenty-five.
- 2003 - Richard Sambrook, the Director of
BBC News, reveals that David Kelly was the source of claims
that Downing Street had "sexed up" the "Dodgy
Dossier".
- 2003 - France: Sixteen people are injured after two bombs
explode outside a tax office in Nice.
- 2005 - Canada becomes the fourth country in the world to
legalise same-sex marriage, after the bill C-38 receives its Royal Assent.
Births
- 356 BC - Alexander the Great, Greek king and
military leader (d. 323 BC)
- 810 - Imam Bukhari, Muslim scholar and compiler of
Hadith (d. 870)
- 1304 - Francesco Petrarch, Italian poet (d. 1374)
- 1537 - Arnaud d'Ossat, French diplomat and writer (d.
1604)
- 1620 - Nikolaes Heinsius, Dutch scholar
(d. 1681)
- 1659 - Hyacinthe Rigaud, French painter (d.
1743)
- 1661 - Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, French
founder of the colony of Louisiana (d. 1706)
- 1673 - John Dalrymple, 2nd Earl of
Stair, Scottish soldier and diplomat (d. 1747)
- 1754 - Destutt de Tracy, French philosopher (d.
1836)
- 1757 - Garsevan Chavchavadze, Georgian diplomat
and politician (d. 1811)
- 1774 - Auguste Marmont, French marshal (d.
1852)
- 1797 - Sir Paweł Edmund Strzelecki, Polish
explorer and geologist (d. 1873)
- 1822 - Gregor Mendel, father of modern genetics (d. 1884)
- 1838 - Augustin Daly, American playwright (d.
1899)
- 1838 - George Otto Trevelyan, British statesman and biographer (d.
1928)
- 1847 - Max Liebermann, German artist (d.
1935)
- 1849 - Robert Anderson Van Wyck, Mayor of New
York City (d. 1918)
- 1858 - Ivan Vucetic, Croatian anthropologist (d.
1925)
- 1864 - Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Swedish writer,
Nobel Prize in Literature laureate (d. 1931)
- 1868 - Miron Cristea, 1st Patriarch of All Romania (d. 1939)
- 1873 - Alberto Santos-Dumont, Brazilian aviator
(d. 1932)
- 1876 - Otto Blumenthal, German mathematician (d.
1944)
- 1889 - John Reith, British broadcast executive (d.
1971)
- 1890 - Theda Bara, American actress (d. 1955)
- 1890 - King George II of Greece (d. 1947)
- 1893 - George Llewelyn-Davies, one of the 'Lost
Boys' for the Peter Pan book (d. 1915)
- 1895 - László Moholy-Nagy, Hungarian painter,
photographer, and sculptor (d. 1946)
- 1897 - Tadeus Reichstein, Polish-born chemist,
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate (d.
1996)
- 1901 - Heinie Manush, American baseball player (d.
1971)
- 1902 - Jimmy Kennedy, Irish composer (d.
1984)
- 1909 - Jean Focas, Greco-French astronomer (d.
1969)
- 1910 - Vilém Tauský, Czech conductor and composer (d.
2004)
- 1912 - Tom McDermott, American actor (d.
1996)
- 1918 - Cindy Walker, American singer (d. 2006)
- 1919 - Sir Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountain
climber
- 1920 - Dick Lucas, American animator (d. 1997)
- 1920 - Elliot Richardson, American politician (d. 1999)
- 1922 - Alan Stephenson Boyd, American
politician
- 1923 - Stanisław Albinowski, Polish economist and
journalist (d. 2005)
- 1924 - Thomas Berger, American novelist
- 1924 - Mort Garson, Canadian composer
- 1925 - Jacques Delors, French President of the European Commission
- 1925 - Frantz Fanon, West Indian psychiatrist and writer (d. 1961)
- 1926 - Lola Albright, American actress
- 1926 - Patricia Cutts, English actress (d. 1974)
- 1929 - Mike Ilitch, American businessman, sports
executive, and philanthropist
- 1929 - Rajendra Kumar, Indian actor (d. 1999)
- 1930 - Chuck Daly, American basketball coach
- 1930 - Sally Ann Howes, English-born singer and actress
- 1932 - Nam June Paik, Korean-born artist (d.
2006)
- 1932 - Otto Schily, German politician
- 1933 - Cormac McCarthy, American author
- 1933 - Rex Williams, English snooker player
- 1933 - Buddy Knox, American singer and songwriter (d. 1999)
- 1934 - Uwe Johnson, German writer
- 1934 - Aliki Vougiouklaki, Greek actress (d. 1996)
- 1936 - Barbara Mikulski, U.S. Senator from
Maryland
- 1937 - Ken Ogata, Japanese actor
- 1938 - Roger Hunt, English footballer
- 1938 - Dame Diana Rigg, English actress
- 1938 - Natalie Wood, American actress (d. 1981)
- 1939 - Judy Chicago, American artist
- 1940 - Tony Oliva, Cuban baseball player
- 1941 - Kurt Raab, German actor (d. 1988)
- 1942 - Ron Bowden, Australian politician
- 1942 - Pete Hamilton, American race car driver
- 1943 - Wendy Richard, English actress
- 1945 - Kim Carnes, American singer and songwriter
- 1945 - Larry Craig, American politician (U.S Senator from Idaho)
- 1945 - John Lodge, English musician (The
Moody Blues)
- 1945 - Bo Rein, American football coach (d. 1980)
- 1945 - Johnny Loughrey, Irish singer (d. 2005)
- 1946 - Randal Kleiser, American film director
- 1947 - Gerd Binnig, German-born physicist,
Nobel laureate
- 1947 - Carlos Santana, Mexican-born American guitarist
- 1948 - Niki Haris, American dancer
- 1948 - Muse Watson, American actor
- 1950 - Tantoo Cardinal, Canadian actress
- 1950 - Naseeruddin Shah, Indian actor
- 1951 - Jeff Rawle, English actor
- 1952 - Keiko Matsuzaka, Japanese actress
- 1953 - Marcia Hines, American-born Australian singer
- 1953 - Thomas Friedman, American journalist
- 1954 - Moira Harris, American actress