History by month
July
31 days of history. Every date is an entry point to the events, births, and moments that shaped our world.
July 1
1997 At the stroke of midnight, the Union Jack descended over the Hong Kong Conventio
July 2
1964 Lyndon Johnson used 75 ceremonial pens to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964, han
July 3
1775 George Washington arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts on July 3, 1775, and found
July 4
1776 Fifty-six men signed a document that marked them for hanging. The Declaration of
July 5
1996 Scientists at Scotland s Roslin Institute took a single mammary gland cell from
July 6
1885 Nine-year-old Joseph Meister had been bitten fourteen times by a rabid dog when
July 7
1898 President William McKinley signed the Newlands Resolution on July 7, 1898, forma
July 8
1776 The bell in the tower of the Pennsylvania State House rang out over Philadelphia
July 9
1877 Twenty-two men paid one guinea each to enter the first lawn tennis championship
July 10
1940 Luftwaffe bombers screamed over the English Channel on July 10, 1940, targeting
July 11
1804 A single pistol shot across the Hudson River ended the life of America's most br
July 12
1943 Hundreds of tanks collided at point-blank range in a sunflower field south of Ku
July 13
1985 Bob Geldof bullied, begged, and shamed the music industry into staging the large
July 14
1789 Seven prisoners sat inside the Bastille on the morning of July 14, 1789: four fo
July 15
1799 A French soldier digging fortifications in the Nile Delta unearthed a broken sla
July 16
1945 A flash brighter than any sun that had ever risen over New Mexico turned the des
July 17
1918 Bolshevik executioners woke the Romanov family at 1:30 a.m. on July 17, 1918, le
July 18
64 Fire erupted in the shops clustered around the Circus Maximus on July 18, 64 AD,
July 19
1848 Three hundred people crowded into a small Methodist chapel in Seneca Falls, New
July 20
1969 Neil Armstrong stepped off a ladder and pressed his boot into the lunar dust at
July 21
1861 Spectators from Washington packed picnic baskets and rode carriages to the hills
July 22
1934 Three federal agents waited in the alley beside the Biograph Theater on Chicago'
July 23
1914 Ten demands, forty-eight hours, and a continent sleepwalking toward catastrophe.
July 24
1974 Eight justices, zero dissents, and a presidency that had sixteen days left to li
July 25
1943 Nineteen members of his own Grand Council voted against him, and by morning the
July 26
1947 One signature reorganized the entire American national security apparatus, creat
July 27
1953 Three years, thirty-six thousand Americans dead, and a border drawn almost exact
July 28
1914 Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914, firing the first shots
July 29
1958 President Dwight Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act on Jul
July 30
1975 Jimmy Hoffa walked into the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloo
July 31
1964 Ranger 7 crashed into the Moon's Sea of Clouds on July 31, 1964, exactly as plan