July 26 in History

The Second Continental Congress established a national postal service and appointed Benjamin Franklin as the first Postmaster General, creating the communication backbone the Revolution desperately needed. Franklin's postal routes connected the thirteen colonies into a functioning information network that carried military dispatches, newspapers, and political correspondence. The system he built evolved into the United States Postal Service, the nation's oldest continuously operating federal institution.

Ninety thousand Muslims faced each other across the Euphrates near Siffin, cousin against cousin. Ali ibn Abu Talib, the Prophet's son-in-law and fourth caliph, commanded one army. Muawiyah, governor of Syria, led the other. They fought for three months—July to September 657—over who rightfully ruled Islam's empire. When Muawiyah's forces raised Qurans on their spears to demand arbitration, the killing stopped. But the arbitration failed. The civil war that began here would split Islam into Sunni and Shia, a division that outlasted both men by fourteen centuries.

Khan Krum turned Nikephoros I's skull into a drinking cup lined with silver. The Byzantine emperor had ignored warnings, pushed 80,000 troops deep into Bulgarian territory, and sacked Pliska on July 20, 811. But Krum trapped the entire army in a mountain pass during their retreat. Three days of slaughter. Nikephoros died alongside most of his men. His son Staurakios survived with a severed spine, ruled paralyzed for two months, then abdicated. Krum reportedly toasted visiting chieftains from his enemy's head for years afterward.

Afonso Henriques commanded maybe 1,000 men against Ali ibn Yusuf's force—sources claim anywhere from 5,000 to 200,000 Almoravid fighters, though medieval chroniclers loved inflating enemy numbers. The prince won anyway at Ourique on July 25, 1139. He didn't wait for permission. At Lamego, he convened Portugal's first estates-general and had the Bishop of Bragança crown him king while his mother's cousin, Alfonso VII of León, still considered Portugal his vassal territory. The Pope wouldn't recognize Portuguese independence for another 40 years, but Afonso ruled regardless—sovereignty declared not by diplomacy but by battlefield and bishop's hands.

A medieval banquet hall at Henry VI's Hoftag suddenly collapsed on July 26, 1184, sending dozens of gathered nobles plunging into open sewage pits below. The tragedy eliminated key regional leaders and forced a temporary halt to imperial governance in the area.

William Herbert led 8,000 Welsh troops toward Banbury, convinced reinforcements would arrive. They didn't. On July 26, 1469, Warwick's forces—disguised as a peasant uprising—slaughtered Herbert's army at Edgecote Moor. Herbert was executed the next morning. His brother too. But here's what mattered: King Edward IV, Herbert's commander, wasn't even there. Warwick had just demonstrated he could destroy a king's army while the king watched from a distance, powerless. Within weeks, Edward was Warwick's prisoner. The man who made kings had just unmade one.

Atahualpa filled a room 22 feet long by 17 feet wide with gold—once to the height of his raised hand—as ransom. Nine tons total. Francisco Pizarro took it anyway and strangled him with an iron collar on July 26, 1533. The emperor had ruled just five years, surviving a civil war against his half-brother only to meet 168 Spaniards in Cajamarca. His execution dissolved the largest empire in pre-Columbian America within months. Turns out you can buy a room full of gold but not a promise from men who'd crossed an ocean for exactly that.

Francis Drake lands at a "fair and good" bay along the Pacific Northwest coast, likely in present-day Oregon or Washington. This landing establishes England's first tangible claim to the region, challenging Spanish dominance over the western seaboard and opening the door for future British exploration and settlement in North America.

The Dutch provinces fired their king by mail. On July 26, 1581, they sent Philip II a formal letter explaining he was no longer their monarch—not a rebellion, they insisted, but a legal termination of contract. The document cited twenty-nine specific grievances. It worked: seven provinces became the Dutch Republic, surviving eighty years of war to win recognition. And it gave Thomas Jefferson a template—the Plakkaat's structure of listing royal abuses before declaring independence appeared word-for-word in another famous breakup letter 195 years later.

Tyrolean peasants stormed the Pontlatzer Bridge to eject Maximilian II Emanuel, shattering his plan to march on Vienna alongside French forces. This rural victory forced the Bavarian army to retreat, directly saving the Habsburg capital from capture during the War of the Spanish Succession.

The fortress cost France 30 years and 30 million livres to build—supposedly more expensive than Versailles. Gone in 49 days. British commander Jeffery Amherst accepted the surrender of Louisbourg on July 26, 1758, after his cannons fired 1,473 shells into the stone walls. 5,637 French soldiers and sailors became prisoners. The British now controlled the gateway to the St. Lawrence River and Quebec itself. France had built the most expensive fortress in North America to guard a colony it would lose within five years.