0064 – The Great Fire of Rome began.

1536 – The authority of the pope was declared void in England.

1743 – “The New York Weekly Journal” published the first half-page newspaper ad.

1789 – Robespierre, a deputy from Arras, France, decided to back the French Revolution.

1812 – Great Britain signed the Treaty of Orebro, making peace with Russia and Sweden.

1830 – Uruguay adopted a liberal constitution.

1872 – The Ballot Act was passed in Great Britain, providing for secret election ballots.

1914 – Six planes of the U.S. Army helped to form an aviation division called the Signal Corps.

1927 – Ty Cobb set a major league baseball record by getting his 4,000th career hit. He hit 4,191 before he retired in 1928.

1932 – The U.S. and Canada signed a treaty to develop the St. Lawrence Seaway.

1935 – Ethiopian King Haile Selassie urged his countrymen to fight to the last man against the invading Italian army.

1936 – The first Oscar Meyer Wienermobile rolled out of General Body Company’s factory in Chicago, IL.

1936 – The Spanish Civil War began as Gen. Francisco Franco led an uprising of army troops based in Spanish North Africa.

1936 – “The Columbia Workshop” debuted on CBS radio.

1942 – The German Me-262, the first jet-propelled aircraft to fly in combat, made its first flight.

1944 – U.S. troops captured Saint-Lo, France, ending the battle of the hedgerows.

1944 – Hideki Tojo was removed as Japanese premier and war minister due to setbacks suffered by his country in World War II.

1947 – U.S. President Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act, which placed the Speaker of the House and the Senate President Pro Tempore next in the line of succession after the vice president.

1964 – Pete Rose (Cincinnati Reds) hit the only grand slam home run of his career.

1970 – Ron Hunt (San Francisco Giants) was hit by a pitch for the 119th time in his career.

1971 – New Zealand and Australia announced they would pull their troops out of Vietnam.

1985 – Jack Nicklaus II, at age 23 years old, made his playing debut on the pro golf tour at the Quad Cities Open in Coal Valley, IL.

2000 – It was announced that Christopher Reeve would direct and serve as executive producer on the TV movie “Rescuing Jeffrey.”

2001 – A train derailed, involving 60 cars, in a Baltimore train tunnel. The fire that resulted lasted for six days and virtually closed down downtown Baltimore for several days. (Maryland)

President Harry Truman signed an Executive Order determining the line of succession if the president becomes incapacitated or dies in office. Following the vice president, the speaker of the house and president of the Senate are next in succession.

This became the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified on February 10, 1967.

On July 17, 2014, two New York Police Department officers confront Eric Garner, a 43-year-old African American father of six, for illegally selling cigarettes. Garner dies after losing consciousness as a police officer locks him in an illegal chokehold, and within hours, a video …read more

1212 – The Moslems were crushed in the Spanish crusade.

1453 – France defeated England at Castillon, France, which ended the 100 Years’ War.

1785 – France limited the importation of goods from Britain.

1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered to the British at Rochefort, France.

1821 – Spain ceded Florida to the U.S.

1862 – National cemeteries were authorized by the U.S. government.

1866 – Authorization was given to build a tunnel beneath the Chicago River. The three-year project cost $512,709.

1867 – Harvard School of Dental Medicine was established in Boston, MA. It was the first dental school in the U.S.

1898 – U.S. troops under General William R. Shafter took Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish-American War.

1917 – The British royal family adopted the Windsor name.

1920 – Sinclair Lewis finished his novel “Main Street.”

1941 – The longest hitting streak in baseball history ended when the Cleveland Indians pitchers held New York Yankee Joe DiMaggio hitless for the first time in 57 games.

1941 – Brigadier General Soervell directed Architect G. Edwin Bergstrom to have basic plans and architectural perspectives for an office building that could house 40,000 War Department employees on his desk by the following Monday morning. The building became known as the Pentagon.

1945 – U.S. President Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill began meeting at Potsdam in the final Allied summit of World War II. During the meeting Stalin made the comment that “Hitler had escaped.” 

1946 – Chinese communists opened a drive against the Nationalist army on the Yangtze River.

1950 – The television show “The Colgate Comedy Hour” debuted featuring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

1954 – The Brooklyn Dodgers made history as the first team with a majority of black players.

1955 – Disneyland opened in Anaheim, CA.

1960 – Francis Gary Powers pled guilty to spying charges in a Moscow court after his U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union.

1966 – Ho Chi Minh ordered a partial mobilization of North Vietnam forces to defend against American air strikes.

1975 – An Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit. It was the first link up between the U.S. and Soviet Union.

1979 – Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza resigned and fled to Miami in exile. (Florida)

1986 – The largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history took place when LTV Corporation asked for court protection from more than 20,000 creditors. LTV Corp. had debts in excess of $4 billion.

1987 – Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and rear Admiral John Poindexter begin testifying to Congress at the “Iran-Contra” hearings.

1995 – The Nasdaq composite stock index rose above 1,000 for the first time.

1997 – After 117 years, the Woolworth Corp. closed its last 400 stores.

1998 – Biologists reported that they had deciphered the genome (genetic map) of the syphilis bacterium.

2008 – In China, construction of the Shanghai World Financial Center was completed.

In Memory

On July 17, 2020, in the midst of a pandemic and a time of unparalleled racial tensions in the United States, the nation loses one of the last towering figures of the civil rights movement. John Lewis, former Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a chief …read more