IOPList.Org

Fire engulfs circus big top in Hartford,
killing 167






1944
July 06



In Hartford, Connecticut, a fire breaks out under the big top of the Ringling Bros. and
Barnum Bailey Circus, killing 167 people and injuring 682. Two-thirds of those who perished
were children. The cause of the fire was unknown, but it spread at incredible speed, racing
up the canvas of the circus tent. Scarcely before the 8,000 spectators inside the big top
could react, patches of burning canvas began falling on them from above, and a stampede
for the exits began. Many were trapped under fallen canvas, but most were able to rip through
it and escape. However, after the tent’s ropes burned and its poles gave way, the whole
burning big top came crashing down, consuming those who remained inside. Within 10 minutes
it was over, and some 100 children and 60 of their adult escorts were dead or dying.

An investigation revealed that the tent had undergone a treatment with flammable paraffin
thinned with three parts of gasoline to make it waterproof. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
eventually agreed to pay $5 million in compensation, and several of the organizers were
convicted on manslaughter charges. In 1950, in a late development in the case, Robert D. Segee
of Circleville, Ohio, confessed to starting the Hartford circus fire. Segee claimed that he had been
an arsonist since the age of six and that an apparition of an Indian on a flaming horse often visited
him and urged him to set fires. In November 1950, Segee was sentenced to two consecutive terms
of 22 years in prison, the maximum penalty in Ohio at the time.




ALSO ON THIS DAY



SPORTS
1933
Major League Baseball’s first
All-Star Game is held

On July 6, 1933, Major League Baseball’s first All-Star Game took place at
Chicago’s Comiskey Park. The brainchild of a determined sports editor, the
event was designed to bolster the sport and improve its reputation during
the darkest years of the Great Depression. Originally ... read more





AMERICAN REVOLUTION
1775
Congress issues a “Declaration on the Causes and
Necessity of Taking Up Arms”

On July 6, 1775, one day after restating their fidelity to King George III and
wishing him “a long and prosperous reign” in the Olive Branch Petition,
Congress sets “forth the causes and necessity of their taking up arms”
against British authority in the American colonies. The ... read more


WOMEN’S HISTORY
1976
Women inducted into U.S. Naval Academy
for the first time

In Annapolis, Maryland, the United States Naval Academy admits women
for the first time in its history with the induction of 81 female midshipmen.
In May 1980, Elizabeth Anne Rowe became the first woman member of
the class to graduate. Four years later, Kristine Holderied became ... read more





HOLOCAUST
1942
Anne Frank’s family takes refuge

In Nazi-occupied Holland, 13-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her
family are forced to take refuge in a secret sealed-off area of an Amsterdam
warehouse. The day before, Anne’s older sister, Margot, had received a
call-up notice to be deported to a Nazi “work camp.” Born in ... read more


BLACK HISTORY
1957
Althea Gibson is first African American
to win Wimbledon

On July 6, 1957, Althea Gibson claims the women’s singles tennis title at
Wimbledon and becomes the first African American to win a championship
at London’s All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Gibson was born
on August 25, 1927, in Silver, South Carolina, and raised in the ... read more





U.S. PRESIDENTS
1946
George Walker Bush is born

On July 6, 1946, George Walker Bush, the son of future President
George Herbert Walker Bush, is born in New Haven, Connecticut.
When he was two years old, Bush’s parents moved to Texas. where
the elder Bush worked in the oil industry. Bush was nicknamed
“Dubya” for his middle ... read more


WESTWARD EXPANSION
1900
Warren Earp killed in Arizona

Warren Earp, the youngest of the famous clan of gun fighting brothers,
is murdered in an Arizona saloon. Nicholas and Virginia Earp raised a
family of five sons and four daughters on a series of farms in Illinois
and Iowa. Three of the Earps’ sons grew up to win lasting infamy. ... read more





ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1862
Mark Twain begins reporting in Virginia City

Writing under the name of Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens begins publishing
news stories in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. Born in Missouri in
1835, Clemens followed a circuitous route to becoming an observer and
writer of the American West. As a young man he apprenticed as ... read more


ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1957
John Lennon meets Paul McCartney for the first time

The front-page headline of the Liverpool Evening Express on July 6, 1957,
read “MERSEYSIDE SIZZLES,” in reference to the heat wave then gripping
not just northern England, but all of Europe. The same headline could
well have been used over a story that received no coverage at all ... read more





RELIGION
1935
Dalai Lama, leader of Tibet, is born

On July 6, an infant named Tenzin Gyatso, future leader of Tibet, is born
to a peasant family in Takster, Tibet. At age two, he will be declared the
Dalai Lama.  In 1937, the child was declared the reincarnation of a great
Buddhist spiritual leader and named the 14th Dalai Lama. ... read more


ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1994
“Forrest Gump” opens,
wins Tom Hanks a second Oscar

On July 6, 1994, the movie Forrest Gump opens in U.S. theaters. A huge
box-office success, the film starred Tom Hanks in the title role of Forrest,
a good-hearted man with a low I.Q. who winds up at the center of key
cultural and historical events of the second half of the 20th ... read more


CRIME
1946
George “Bugs” Moran is arrested

FBI agents arrest George “Bugs” Moran, along with fellow crooks
Virgil Summers and Albert Fouts, in Kentucky. Once one of the biggest
organized crime figures in America, Moran had been reduced to
small bank robberies by this time. He died in prison 11 years later.
Bugs Moran’s ... read more





AFRICA
1967
Civil war breaks out in Nigeria

Five weeks after its secession from Nigeria, the breakaway Republic
of Biafra is attacked by Nigerian government forces. In 1960, Nigeria
gained independence from Britain. Six years later, the Muslim Hausas
in northern Nigeria began massacring the Christian Igbos in
the region, ... read more

Building of Hoover Dam begins





1930
July 07




On July 7, 1930, construction of the Hoover Dam begins. Over the next five years, a total of
21,000 men would work ceaselessly to produce what would be the largest dam of its time, as
well as one of the largest manmade structures in the world.

Although the dam would take only five years to build, its construction was nearly 30 years in the
making. Arthur Powell Davis, an engineer from the Bureau of Reclamation, originally had his vision
for the Hoover Dam back in 1902, and his engineering report on the topic became the guiding
document when plans were finally made to begin the dam in 1922.

Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States and a committed conservationist, played a
crucial role in making Davis’ vision a reality. As secretary of commerce in 1921, Hoover devoted
himself to the erection of a high dam in Boulder Canyon. The dam would provide essential flood
control, which would prevent damage to downstream farming communities that suffered each year
when snow from the Rocky Mountains melted and joined the Colorado River. Further, the dam would
allow the expansion of irrigated farming in the desert, and would provide a dependable supply of
water for Los Angeles and other southern California communities.

Even with Hoover’s exuberant backing and a regional consensus around the need to build the dam,
Congressional approval and individual state cooperation were slow in coming. For many years,
water rights had been a source of contention among the western states that had claims on the
Colorado River. To address this issue, Hoover negotiated the Colorado River Compact, which broke
the river basin into two regions with the water divided between them. Hoover then had to introduce
and re-introduce the bill to build the dam several times over the next few years before the House
and Senate finally approved the bill in 1928.

In 1929, Hoover, now president, signed the Colorado River Compact into law, claiming it was
“the most extensive action ever taken by a group of states under the provisions of the Constitution
permitting compacts between states.”

Once preparations were made, the Hoover Dam’s construction sprinted forward: The contractors
finished their work two years ahead of schedule and millions of dollars under budget. Today, the
Hoover Dam generates enough energy each year to serve over a million people, and stands,
in Hoover Dam artist Oskar Hansen’s words, as “a monument to collective genius exerting itself
in community efforts around a common need or ideal.”



ALSO ON THIS DAY



SPORTS
2019
U.S. women's soccer team wins record
4th World Cup title

On July 7, 2019, after a dominating tournament showing, the U.S.
women’s national team brings home a record fourth FIFA World
Cup title—its second in a row. Held in host country France,
the 2-0 final saw the United States facing the Netherlands,
with the first goal scored in the ...
read more


WORLD WAR I
1917
British Women's Auxiliary Army Corps
is officially established

On July 7, 1917, British Army Council Instruction Number 1069
formally establishes the British Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC),
authorizing female volunteers to serve alongside their male
counterparts in France during World War I. By 1917, large numbers
of women were already ...
read more


WOMEN’S HISTORY
1976
Female cadets enrolled at West Point

For the first time in history, women are enrolled into the United States
Military Academy at West Point, New York. On May 28, 1980, 62 of
these female cadets graduated and were commissioned as second
lieutenants. The United States Military Academy—the first military
school in ...
read more





GREAT BRITAIN
2005
Terrorists attack London transit system at rush hour

On the morning of July 7, 2005, bombs are detonated in three crowded
London subways and one bus during the peak of the city’s rush hour.
The synchronized suicide bombings, which were thought to be the
work of al-Qaida, killed 56 people including the bombers and
injured another ...
read more





US GOVERNMENT
1981
Sandra Day O’Connor nominated to Supreme Court

President Ronald Reagan nominates Sandra Day O’Connor, an Arizona
court of appeals judge, to be the first woman Supreme Court justice
in U.S. history. On September 21, the Senate unanimously approved
her appointment to the nation’s highest court, and on September 25
she was sworn ...
read more





WORLD WAR II
1942
Himmler decides to begin medical experiments
on Auschwitz prisoners

On July 7, 1942, Heinrich Himmler, in league with three others, including
a physician, decides to begin experimenting on women in the Auschwitz
concentration camps and to investigate extending this experimentation
on males. Himmler, architect of Hitler’s program to exterminate ...
read more


VIETNAM WAR
1969
First U.S. troops withdrawn from South Vietnam

A battalion of the U.S. 9th Infantry Division leaves Saigon in the initial
withdrawal of U.S. troops. The 814 soldiers were the first of 25,000
troops that were withdrawn in the first stage of the U.S. disengagement
from the war. There would be 14 more increments in the ...
read more





SPORTS
1912
Jim Thorpe begins Olympic triathlon

On July 7, 1912, Jim Thorpe wins the pentathlon at the fifth modern
Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. At the time, Thorpe, a Native American
who attended Pennsylvania’s Carlisle Indian School, was only beginning
to establish his reputation as the greatest all-around athlete in the ...
read more





U.S. PRESIDENTS
1946
Future President Jimmy Carter marries

On July 7, 1946, James Earl “Jimmy” Carter marries Eleanor Rosalynn Smith
at the Plains Methodist Church in Plains, Georgia. When the couple met,
she was 18 and working in a hair salon. He was 21 and a recent graduate
of the Annapolis Naval Academy. READ MORE: Jimmy and ...
read more





CRIME
1865
Mary Surratt is first woman executed
by U.S. federal government

Mary Surratt is executed by the U.S. government for her role as a
conspirator in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Surratt, who owned
a tavern in Surrattsville (now Clinton), Maryland, had to convert her
row house in Washington, D.C., into a boardinghouse as a result of financial ...
read more





COLD WAR
1983
11-year-old Samantha Smith
leaves for visit to the USSR

Samantha Smith, an 11-year-old American girl, begins a two-week
visit to the Soviet Union at the invitation of Soviet leader Yuri Andropov.
Some American observers believed that Smith was merely being used
by the Soviets for their own propaganda purposes, while others saw her ...
read more





NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY
1863
Kit Carson begins his campaign against Native Americans

On July 7, 1863, the Union’s Lt. Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson
leaves Santa Fe with his troops, beginning his campaign against
the Native Americans of New Mexico and Arizona. A mountain man
before the Civil War, Kit Carson was responsible for waging a
destructive war against ...
read more

Liberty Bell tolls to announce Declaration of Independence







1776
July 08



On July 8, 1776, a 2,000-pound copper-and-tin bell now known as the “Liberty Bell” rings out
from the tower of the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia,
summoning citizens to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence. Four days
earlier, the historic document had been adopted by delegates to the Continental Congress,
but the bell did not ring to announce the issuing of the document until the
Declaration of Independence returned from the printer on July 8.

In 1751, to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of Pennsylvania’s original constitution,
the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly ordered the bell to be constructed. After being cracked
during a test, and then recast twice, the bell was hung from the State House steeple in June 1753.
Rung to call the Pennsylvania Assembly together and to summon people for special announcements
and events, it was also rung on important occasions, such as King George III’s 1761 ascension
to the British throne and, in 1765, to call the people together to discuss Parliament’s controversial
Stamp Act. With the outbreak of the American Revolution in April 1775, the bell was rung to
announce the battles of Lexington and Concord. Its most famous tolling, however, was on
July 8, 1776, when it summoned Philadelphia citizens for the first reading of the
Declaration of Independence.

As the British advanced toward Philadelphia in the fall of 1777, the bell was removed from the city
and hidden in Allentown to save it from being melted down by the British and used to make cannons.
After the British defeat in 1781, the bell was returned to Philadelphia, which served as the nation’s
capital from 1790 to 1800. In addition to marking important events, the bell tolled annually to
celebrate George Washington’s birthday on February 22 and the Fourth of July. The name
“Liberty Bell” was first coined in an 1839 poem in an abolitionist pamphlet.

The question of when the Liberty Bell acquired its famous fracture has been the subject of a good
deal of historical debate. In the most commonly accepted account, the bell suffered a major break
while tolling for the funeral of the chief justice of the United States, John Marshall, in 1835, and
in 1846 the crack expanded to its present size while in use to mark Washington’s birthday.
After that date, it was regarded as unsuitable for ringing, but it was still ceremoniously tapped
on occasion to commemorate important events. On June 6, 1944, when Allied forces invaded France,
the sound of the bell’s dulled ring was broadcast by radio across the United States.




ALSO ON THIS DAY



1990S
1994
North Korea’s “Great Leader” dies

Kim Il-Sung, the communist dictator of North Korea since 1948,
dies of a heart attack at the age of 82. In the 1930s, Kim fought
against the Japanese occupation of Korea and was singled out by
Soviet authorities, who sent him to the USSR for military and
political training. He ...
read more





KOREA
1950
MacArthur named Korean commander

The day after the U.N. Security Council recommended that all
U.N. forces in Korea be placed under the command of the U.S. military,
General Douglas MacArthur is appointed head of the United Nations
Command by President Harry S. Truman. MacArthur, the son of a
top-ranking army ...
read more





19TH CENTURY
1853
Commodore Perry sails into Tokyo Bay

Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, representing the U.S. government,
sails into Tokyo Bay, Japan, with a squadron of four vessels. For a time,
Japanese officials refused to speak with Perry, but under threat of attack
by the superior American ships they accepted letters from ...
read more


FRANCE
1951
Paris celebrates 2,000th birthday

On July 8, 1951, Paris, the capital city of France, celebrates turning
2,000 years old. In fact, a few more candles would’ve technically been
required on the birthday cake, as the City of Lights was most likely
founded around 250 B.C. The history of Paris can be traced back to a ...
read more





WORLD WAR II
1941
German general’s diary reveals Hitler’s plans for Russia

On July 8, 1941, upon the German army’s invasion of Pskov, 180 miles
from Leningrad, Russia, the chief of the German army general staff,
General Franz Halder, records in his diary Hitler’s plans for Moscow and
Leningrad: “To dispose fully of their population, which otherwise we ...
read more


WORLD WAR I
1918
Ernest Hemingway wounded on the Italian front

On July 8, 1918, Ernest Hemingway, an 18-year-old ambulance driver
for the American Red Cross, is struck by a mortar shell while serving on
the Italian front, along the Piave delta, in World War I. A native of
Oak Park, Illinois, Hemingway was working as a reporter for the ...
read more





VIETNAM WAR
1959
First Americans killed in South Vietnam

Maj. Dale R. Buis and Master Sgt. Chester M. Ovnand become the first
Americans killed in the American phase of the Vietnam War when guerrillas
strike a Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) compound in Bien Hoa,
20 miles northeast of Saigon. The group had arrived in South ...
read more





WESTWARD EXPANSION
1898
Soapy Smith killed in Skagway, Alaska

A disgruntled city engineer in Skagway, Alaska, murders “Soapy” Smith,
one of the most notorious con men in the history of the West. Born in
Georgia in 1860, Jefferson Randolph Smith went west while still a young
man, finding work as a cowboy in Texas. Smith eventually tired of ...
read more





CRIME
1928
A spiteful son kills four in a fit of rage

Rose Booher, her son Fred, and two hired workers are all shot to death on
a secluded farm in Mannville, Alberta, Canada, while the rest of the Booher
family is away. Although nothing appeared to be stolen from the house and
few clues were found, authorities determined that a ...
read more





COLD WAR
1954
Colonel Castillo Armas takes power in Guatemala

Col. Carlos Castillo Armas is elected president of the junta that overthrew
the administration of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in late
June 1954. The election of Castillo Armas was the culmination of U.S. efforts
to remove Arbenz and save Guatemala from what American ...
read more

Venus Williams wins Wimbledon
for the first time






2000
July 09



On July 9, 2000, Venus Williams wins at Wimbledon for the first time. Her victory over defending
champion, Lindsay Davenport, made Williams the first Black female Wimbledon champion since
Althea Gibson won back-to-back titles in 1957 and 1958.

Overcoming a tough childhood in Compton, California, Williams became a champion women’s tennis
player with seven Grand Slam singles titles, 16 Grand Slam doubles titles and four Olympic gold
medals. Williams and her sister Serena are considered two of the greatest tennis players of all time.

Williams was born on June 17, 1980, in Lynwood, California. Her father, a self-taught tennis coach,
trained his daughters on the local courts. When Williams was 10 years old, the family relocated to
West Palm Beach, Florida so Venus and Serena could attend a tennis academy.

By the age of 10, Williams’ serve topped off at an impressive 100 miles per hour. Thanks to that
serve and athletic prowess on the court, Williams was 63-0 on the United States Tennis Association
junior tour.

On October 31, 1994, Williams turned pro at 14 years old. In 1997, she became the first woman
since Pam Shriver in 1978 to reach the final of her first U.S. Open. In 1998, she won her first
Grand Slam at the Australian Open. A year later, she won the French Open women’s doubles
tournament with her sister.


When Williams won at Wimbledon in 2000, she said, “It’s really great because I’ve been working
so hard all my life to be here… It’s strange. I’d go to bed at night and I’d dream I’d won a Grand Slam,
but when I woke up, there was the nightmare. Now, I don’t have to wake up like that anymore.”

That same year she went on to win the U.S. Open, two gold medals at the 2000 Summer Olympic
Games in Sydney and signed a $40 million sponsorship deal with Reebok.

In 2011, Williams revealed she was battling Sjögren syndrome, a chronic, incurable immune system
disorder. Many expected her to take a step back from tennis. Instead, she went on to win gold at
the 2012 Summer Olympics and the women’s doubles title at Wimbledon.



ALSO ON THIS DAY



RUSSIA
1762
Catherine the Great assumes power

On July 9, 1762, the wife of Russia’s new emperor, Peter III, rallies
the army regiments of St. Petersburg against her husband and is
proclaimed Empress Catherine II, the sole ruler of Russia. More
commonly known as Catherine the Great, she would stay on the
throne for the next ...
read more


COLD WAR
1960
Soviet Premier Khrushchev and President Eisenhower
trade threats over Cuba

President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
trade verbal threats over the future of Cuba. In the following years,
Cuba became a dangerous focus in the Cold War competition between
the United States and Russia. In January 1959, Cuban revolutionary Fidel ...
read more


ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1962
Bob Dylan records “Blowin’ In The Wind”

“This here ain’t no protest song or anything like that, ’cause I don’t write
no protest songs.” That was how Bob Dylan introduced one of the most
eloquent protest songs ever written when he first performed it publicly.
It was the spring of his first full year in New York City, ...
read more





1990S
1993
Romanov remains identified using DNA

British forensic scientists announce that they have positively identified the
remains of Russia’s last czar, Nicholas II; his wife, Czarina Alexandra; and
three of their daughters. The scientists used mitochondria DNA fingerprinting
to identify the bones, which had been excavated ...
read more





WOMEN’S HISTORY
1947
First female army officer is appointed

In a ceremony held at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, General Dwight D.
Eisenhower appoints Florence Blanchfield to be a lieutenant colonel in the
U.S. Army, making her the first woman in U.S. history to hold permanent
military rank. A member of the Army Nurse Corps since ...
read more





SPORTS
1877
Wimbledon tournament begins

On July 9, 1877, the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club begins its
first lawn tennis tournament at Wimbledon, then an outer-suburb of London.
Twenty-one amateurs showed up to compete in the Gentlemen’s Singles
tournament, the only event at the first Wimbledon. The winner ...
read more


VIETNAM WAR
1971
United States turns over responsibility for the DMZ

Four miles south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), about 500 U.S. troops of
the 1st Brigade, 5th Mechanized Division turn over Fire Base Charlie 2 to
Saigon troops, completing the transfer of defense responsibilities for the
border area. On the previous day, nearby Fire Base Alpha ...
read more


U.S. PRESIDENTS
1850
President Zachary Taylor dies unexpectedly

On July 9, 1850, after only 16 months in office, President Zachary Taylor
dies after a brief illness. The exact cause of his death is still disputed
by some historians. On a scorching Fourth of July in Washington, D.C.,
Taylor attended festivities at the newly dedicated ...
read more


WESTWARD EXPANSION
1846
U.S. takes San Francisco from Mexico

An American naval captain occupies the small settlement of Yerba Buena,
a site that will later be renamed San Francisco. Europeans did not
encounter the spectacular San Francisco Bay until 1769, although
several explorers had sailed by it in earlier centuries. When Spanish ...
read more


ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1918
William Faulkner joins the Royal Air Force

William Faulkner joins the Royal Air Force on this day, but will never
see combat because World War I will end before he completes his
training. Faulkner joined the RAF after his high school sweetheart,
Estelle, married another man. He quit his hometown, Oxford, Mississippi, ...
read more


CRIME
1996
A family is brutally attacked on a walk in England

Dr. Lin Russell, her two daughters, Josie and Megan, and their dog,
Lucy, are all brutally attacked by a man wielding a hammer on their
way home to Nonington Village, Kent, England, after a swimming
gala. Forcing them to sit down in the woods, the attacker blindfolded
and tied up ...
read more





AMERICAN REVOLUTION
1777
New York elects its first governor

On July 9, 1777, New York elects Brigadier General George Clinton
as the first governor of the independent state of New York. Clinton
would go on to become New York’s longest-serving governor, as
well as the longest-serving governor in the United States,
holding the post until ...
read more


WORLD WAR I
1915
Germans surrender Southwest Africa
to Union of South Africa

On July 9, 1915, with the Central Powers pressing their advantage
on the Western Front during World War I, the Allies score a distant
victory, when military forces of the Union of South Africa accept a
German surrender in the territory of Southwest Africa.
The Union of South ...
read more


WORLD WAR II
1941
Enigma key broken

On July 9, 1941, British cryptologists help break the secret code
used by the German army to direct ground-to-air operations on
the Eastern front. British and Polish experts had already broken
many of the Enigma codes for the Western front. Enigma was the
Germans’ most ...
read more

Scopes Monkey Trial begins







1925
July 10



July 10, 1925: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial begins
with John Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching
evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law.

The law, which had been passed in March, made it a misdemeanor punishable by
fine to “teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as
taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower
order of animals.” With local businessman George Rappleyea, Scopes had conspired
to get charged with this violation, and after his arrest the pair enlisted the aid of
the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to organize a defense. Hearing of this
coordinated attack on Christian fundamentalism, William Jennings Bryan, the
three-time Democratic presidential candidate and a fundamentalist hero, volunteered
to assist the prosecution. Soon after, the great attorney Clarence Darrow agreed
to join the ACLU in the defense, and the stage was set for one of the most famous
trials in U.S. history.

On July 10, the Monkey Trial got underway, and within a few days hordes of spectators
and reporters had descended on Dayton as preachers set up revival tents along the
city’s main street to keep the faithful stirred up. Inside the Rhea County Courthouse,
the defense suffered early setbacks when Judge John Raulston ruled against their
attempt to prove the law unconstitutional and then refused to end his practice of
opening each day’s proceeding with prayer.

Outside, Dayton took on a carnival-like atmosphere as an exhibit featuring two
chimpanzees and a supposed “missing link” opened in town, and vendors sold Bibles,
toy monkeys, hot dogs, and lemonade. The missing link was in fact Jo Veins of
Burlington, Vermont, a 51-year-old man who was of short stature and possessed a
receding forehead and a protruding jaw. One of the chimpanzees—named Joe Mendi—wore
a plaid suit, a brown fedora, and white spats, and entertained Dayton’s citizens by
monkeying around on the courthouse lawn.

In the courtroom, Judge Raulston destroyed the defense’s strategy by ruling that
expert scientific testimony on evolution was inadmissible–on the grounds that it was
Scopes who was on trial, not the law he had violated. The next day, Raulston ordered
the trial moved to the courthouse lawn, fearing that the weight of the crowd inside
was in danger of collapsing the floor.

In front of several thousand spectators in the open air, Darrow changed his tactics
and as his sole witness called Bryan in an attempt to discredit his literal interpretation
of the Bible. In a searching examination, Bryan was subjected to severe ridicule and
forced to make ignorant and contradictory statements to the amusement of the crowd.
On July 21, in his closing speech, Darrow asked the jury to return a verdict of guilty
in order that the case might be appealed. Under Tennessee law, Bryan was thereby
denied the opportunity to deliver the closing speech he had been preparing for weeks.
After eight minutes of deliberation, the jury returned with a guilty verdict, and Raulston
ordered Scopes to pay a fine of $100, the minimum the law allowed. Although Bryan
had won the case, he had been publicly humiliated and his fundamentalist beliefs had
been disgraced. Five days later, on July 26, he lay down for a Sunday afternoon nap
and never woke up.

In 1927, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the Monkey Trial verdict on a
technicality but left the constitutional issues unresolved until 1968, when the
U.S. Supreme Court overturned a similar Arkansas law on the grounds that it
violated the First Amendment.


WATCH:
The Monkey Trial on HISTORY Vault






ALSO ON THIS DAY



21ST CENTURY
2018
Last of Thai soccer team rescued from cave

In a search and rescue scramble that gripped the world’s attention for
more than two weeks, the last of 12 Thai youth soccer players and
their coach are safely rescued and transported to a local hospital on
July 10, 2018. On June 23, 2018, Ekkapol Chantawong, 25,
and his players, ...
read more





1980S
1985
A bomb sinks the Rainbow Warrior,
Greenpeace’s flagship vessel

In Auckland harbor in New Zealand, Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior
sinks after French agents in diving gear plant a bomb on the hull
of the vessel. One person, Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira,
was killed. The Rainbow Warrior, the flagship of international
conservation group ...
read more





WORLD WAR II
1943
Allies land on Sicily

On July 10, 1943, the Allies begin their invasion of Axis-controlled
Europe with landings on the island of Sicily, off mainland Italy.
Encountering little resistance from the demoralized Sicilian troops,
the British 8th Army under Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery
came ashore ...
read more





INVENTIONS & SCIENCE
1962
U.S. patent issued for three-point seatbelt

The United States Patent Office issues the Swedish engineer
Nils Bohlin a patent for his three-point automobile safety belt
“for use in vehicles, especially road vehicles” on July 10, 1962.
Four years earlier, Sweden’s Volvo Car Corporation had hired
Bohlin, who had previously ...
read more





WORLD WAR II
1940
The Battle of Britain begins

On July 10, 1940, the Germans begin the first in a long series of
bombing raids against Great Britain, as the Battle of Britain,
which will last three and a half months, begins. After the
occupation of France by Germany, Britain knew it was only a
matter of time before the Axis ...
read more





U.S. PRESIDENTS
1850
Millard Fillmore sworn in as 13th U.S. president

On July 10, 1850, Vice President Millard Fillmore is sworn in as
the 13th president of the United States. President Zachary Taylor
had died the day before, five days after falling ill with a severe
intestinal ailment on the Fourth of July. Fillmore was only the
second man to ...
read more





CRIME
1889
“Buckskin” Frank Leslie murders a prostitute

In a drunken rage, “Buckskin” Frank Leslie murders his lover, the
Tombstone sex worker Blonde Mollie Williams. Leslie was an
ill-tempered and violent man, especially when he drank. He told
conflicting stories about his early life. At times, he said he was
from Texas, at other ...
read more





NATURAL DISASTERS & ENVIRONMENT
1887
Dam collapses in Switzerland, kills 70

On July 10, 1887, a dam breaks in Zug, Switzerland, killing 70
people in their homes and destroying a large section of the town.
The dam at Zug was 80 feet high and made of concrete. When
the dam was built, concrete-making and setting techniques were
not as advanced as they ...
read more


CRIME
1992
The Exxon Valdez captain’s conviction is overturned

The Alaska court of appeals overturns the conviction of Joseph Hazelwood,
the former captain of the oil tanker Exxon Valdez. Hazelwood, who
was found guilty of negligence for his role in the massive oil spill in
Prince William Sound in 1989, successfully argued that he was ...
read more

Aaron Burr slays Alexander Hamilton in duel







1804
July 11



On July 11, 1804, in one of the most famous duels in American history,
Vice President Aaron Burr fatally shoots his long-time political antagonist Alexander Hamilton.
Hamilton, a leading Federalist and the chief architect of America’s political economy,
died the following day.

Alexander Hamilton, born on the Caribbean island of Nevis, came to the American colonies
in 1773 as a poor immigrant. (There is some controversy as to the year of his birth, but
it was either 1755 or 1757.) In 1776, he joined the Continental Army in the American Revolution,
and his relentless energy and remarkable intelligence brought him to the attention of
General George Washington, who took him on as an aide. Ten years later, Hamilton served
as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and he led the fight to win ratification of the
final document, which created the kind of strong, centralized government that he favored.
In 1789, he was appointed the first secretary of the treasury by President Washington, and
during the next six years he crafted a sophisticated monetary policy that saved the young
U.S. government from collapse. With the emergence of political parties, Hamilton was
regarded as a leader of the Federalists.

Aaron Burr, born into a prestigious New Jersey family in 1756, was also intellectually gifted,
and he graduated from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) at the age of 17. He joined
the Continental Army in 1775 and distinguished himself during the Patriot attack on Quebec.
A masterful politician, he was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1784 and later served
as state attorney. In 1790, he defeated Alexander Hamilton’s father-in-law in a race for
the U.S. Senate.


Hamilton came to detest Burr, whom he regarded as a dangerous opportunist, and he often
spoke ill of him. When Burr joined Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican ticket
(the forerunner of the Democratic Party) as vice president in the 1796 election, Hamilton
launched a series of public attacks against Burr, stating, “I feel it is a religious duty to oppose
his career.” John Adams won the presidency, and in 1797 Burr left the Senate and returned
to the New York Assembly.

In the 1800 election, Jefferson and Burr became running mates again. Burr aided the
Democratic-Republican ticket by publishing a confidential document that Hamilton had written
criticizing his fellow Federalist President John Adams. This caused a rift in the Federalists and
helped Jefferson and Burr win the election with 73 electoral votes each.

Under the electoral procedure then prevailing, president and vice president were not voted
for separately; the candidate who received the most votes was elected president, and the
second in line, vice president. The vote then went to the House of Representatives. What at
first seemed but an electoral technicality—handing Jefferson victory over his running
mate—developed into a major constitutional crisis when Federalists in the lame-duck Congress
threw their support behind Burr. After a remarkable 35 tie votes, a small group of Federalists
changed sides and voted in Jefferson’s favor. Alexander Hamilton, who had supported Jefferson
as the lesser of two evils, was instrumental in breaking the deadlock.

Burr became vice president, but Jefferson grew apart from him, and he did not support Burr’s
renomination to a second term in 1804. That year, a faction of New York Federalists, who had
found their fortunes drastically diminished after the ascendance of Jefferson, sought to enlist
the disgruntled Burr into their party and elect him governor. Hamilton campaigned against Burr
with great fervor, and Burr lost the Federalist nomination and then, running as an independent
for governor, the election. In the campaign, Burr’s character was savagely attacked by Hamilton
and others, and after the election he resolved to restore his reputation by challenging Hamilton
to a duel, or an “affair of honor,” as they were known.

Affairs of honor were commonplace in America at the time, and the complex rules governing
them usually led to an honorable resolution before any actual firing of weapons. In fact, the
outspoken Hamilton had been involved in several affairs of honor in his life, and he had resolved
most of them peaceably. No such recourse was found with Burr, however, and on July 11, 1804,
the enemies met at 7 a.m. at the dueling grounds near Weehawken, New Jersey. It was the
same spot where Hamilton’s son had died defending his father’s honor in 1801.

There are conflicting accounts of what happened next. According to Hamilton’s “second”—his
assistant and witness in the duel—Hamilton decided the duel was morally wrong and deliberately
fired into the air. Burr’s second claimed that Hamilton fired at Burr and missed. What happened
next is agreed upon: Burr shot Hamilton in the stomach, and the bullet lodged next to his spine.
Hamilton was taken back to New York, and he died the next afternoon.

Few affairs of honor actually resulted in deaths, and the nation was outraged by the killing of a
man as eminent as Alexander Hamilton. Charged with murder, Burr, still vice president, returned
to Washington, D.C., where he finished his term immune from prosecution.

In 1805, Burr, thoroughly discredited, concocted a plot with James Wilkinson, commander of the
U.S. Army, to seize the Louisiana Territory and establish an independent empire, which Burr,
presumably, would lead. He contacted the British government and unsuccessfully pleaded for
assistance in the scheme. Later, when border trouble with Spanish Mexico heated up, Burr and
Wilkinson conspired to seize territory in Spanish America for the same purpose.

In the fall of 1806, Burr led a group of well-armed colonists toward New Orleans, prompting an
immediate U.S. investigation. General Wilkinson, in an effort to save himself, turned against Burr
and sent dispatches to Washington accusing Burr of treason. In February 1807, Burr was arrested
in Louisiana for treason and sent to Virginia to be tried in a U.S. court. In September, he was
acquitted on a technicality. Nevertheless, public opinion condemned him as a traitor, and he fled
to Europe. He later returned to private life in New York, the murder charges against him forgotten.
He died in 1836.



ALSO ON THIS DAY




BLACK HISTORY
1905
Members of the Niagara Movement
meet for the first time

Niagara Movement members begin meeting on the Canadian side
of the Niagara Falls. This all-African American group of scholars,
lawyers and businessmen came together for three days to create
what would soon become a powerful post-slavery Black rights organization.
Although it only ...
read more


ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1960
“To Kill a Mockingbird” published

On July 11, 1960, the 34-year-old novelist Nelle Harper Lee publishes
her first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Set in Maycomb, a small Alabama
town much like Lee’s native Monroeville, To Kill a Mockingbird is populated
with indelible characters, including the book's tomboy ...
read more





RELIGION
1656
First Quaker colonists land at Boston

Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, two Englishwomen, become the first Quakers
to immigrate to the American colonies when the ship carrying them
lands at Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The pair came from
Barbados, where Quakers had established a center for missionary work. The ...
read more

US GOVERNMENT
1995
U.S. establishes diplomatic relations with Vietnam

Two decades after the Fall of Saigon, President Bill Clinton establishes
full diplomatic relations with Vietnam, citing Vietnamese cooperation in
accounting for the 2,238 Americans still listed as missing in the Vietnam War.
Normalization with America’s old enemy began in early ...
read more


SPACE EXPLORATION
1979
Skylab crashes to Earth

Parts of Skylab, America’s first space station, come crashing down on
Australia and into the Indian Ocean five years after the last manned
Skylab mission ended. No one was injured. Launched in 1973, Skylab
was the world’s first successful space station. The first manned Skylab ...
read more





WORLD WAR II
1944
Hitler is paid a visit by his would-be assassin

On July 11, 1944, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a German army
officer, transports a bomb to Adolf Hitler’s headquarters in Berchtesgaden,
in Bavaria, with the intention of assassinating the Fuhrer.  As the war ...
read more





SPORTS
1914
Babe Ruth makes MLB debut

On July 11, 1914, in his major league debut, George Herman “Babe” Ruth
pitches seven strong innings to lead the Boston Red Sox over the
Cleveland Indians (now known as the Cleveland Guardians), 4-3.
George Herman Ruth was born February 6, 1895, in Baltimore, Maryland,
where his ...
read more





U.S. PRESIDENTS
1767
John Quincy Adams is born

On July 11, 1767, John Quincy Adams, son of the second U.S. president,
John Adams, is born in Braintree, Massachusetts. John Quincy Adams inherited
his father’s passion for politics. He accompanied his father on diplomatic
missions from the time he was 14 and entered the legal ...
read more


1970S
1978
Gas fire incinerates crowded campsite,
killing hundreds

On July 11, 1978, a truck carrying liquid gas crashes into a campsite,
crowded with vacationers, in San Carlos de la Rapita, Spain. The resulting
explosion killed more than 200 people; many others suffered severe burns.
Shortly after 3 p.m. on a hot day on the Mediterranean ...
read more





COLD WAR
1945
Soviets agree to hand over power in West Berlin

Fulfilling agreements reached at various wartime conferences, the Soviet Union
promises to hand power over to British and U.S. forces in West Berlin. Although
the division of Berlin (and of Germany as a whole) into zones of occupation
was seen as a temporary postwar expedient, ...
read more


CIVIL WAR
1861
Union notches a victory at the Battle of Rich Mountain

On July 11, 1861, Union troops under General George B. McClellan score
another major victory in the struggle for western Virginia at the Battle of
Rich Mountain. The Yankee success secured the region and ensured the
eventual creation of West Virginia. Western Virginia was a ...
read more


AMERICAN REVOLUTION
1782
British evacuate Savannah, Georgia

On July 11, 1782, British Royal Governor Sir James Wright, along with
several civil officials and military officers, flee the city of Savannah, Georgia,
and head to Charleston, South Carolina. As part of the British evacuation,
a group consisting of British regulars led by ...
read more


WORLD WAR I
1918
German command makes final plans for
renewed offensive on the Western Front

Even with a deadly influenza epidemic spreading among German troops,
the German High Command decides to go ahead with plans for a renewed
assault on the Allies on the Western Front in the summer of 1918, making
their final plans on July 11. The so-called Spanish flu, an ...
read more

Geraldine Ferraro named
vice presidential candidate






1984
July 12



Walter Mondale, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, announces that he has chosen
Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate. Ferraro, a daughter of Italian
immigrants, had previously gained recognition as a vocal advocate of women’s rights in Congress.
Ferraro became the first female vice presidential candidate to represent a major political party.

Four days after Ferraro was named vice presidential candidate, Governor Mario Cuomo of New York
opened the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco with an impassioned retort to
Republican President Ronald Reagan’s contention that the United States was a “shining city on a hill.”
Citing widespread poverty and racial strife, Cuomo derided President Reagan as oblivious to the
needs and problems of many of America’s citizens. His enthusiastic keynote address inaugurated
a convention that saw Ferraro become the first woman nominated by a major party for the
vice presidency. However, Mondale, the former U.S. vice president under Jimmy Carter, proved
a lackluster choice for the Democratic presidential nominee.

On November 6, President Reagan and Vice President George Bush defeated the Mondale-Ferraro
ticket in the greatest Republican landslide in U.S. history. The Republicans carried every state
but Minnesota—Mondale’s home state.

Ferraro left Congress in 1985. In 1992 and 1998, she made unsuccessful bids for a U.S. Senate
seat. During President Bill Clinton’s administration, she was a permanent member on the
United Nations Commission on Human Rights. She died in 2011, at age 75.
In 2021, Kamala Harris was sworn in as the first female vice president.





ALSO ON THIS DAY



US GOVERNMENT
1862
Medal of Honor created

President Abraham Lincoln signs into law a measure calling for the
awarding of a U.S. Army Medal of Honor, in the name of Congress,
“to such noncommissioned officers and privates as shall most
distinguish themselves by their gallantry in action, and other
soldier-like qualities ...
read more





VIETNAM WAR
1966

North Vietnam urged to treat U.S. POWs better

The National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) and American
socialist Norman Thomas appeal to North Vietnamese President
Ho Chi Minh on behalf of captured American pilots. The number of
American captives was on the increase due to the intensification of
Operation ...
read more


VIETNAM WAR
1965
First Marine to receive Medal of Honor
for action in Vietnam is killed

U.S.M.C. Lieutenant Frank Reasoner—who became the first Marine to
be awarded the prestigious Medal of Honor for action in Vietnam—is killed
by enemy fire on July 11, 1965.  Reasoner and his battalion had been
on a sweep of a suspected Viet Cong area to deter any enemy activity ...
read more





U.S. PRESIDENTS
1957
Eisenhower takes first presidential ride in a helicopter

On July 12, 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the first president
to ride in the newest advance in aviation technology: the helicopter.
Although experimental military helicopters had been tested since 1947,
it was not until 10 years later that a president considered using the ...
read more





WESTWARD EXPANSION
1861
Wild Bill Hickok’s first gunfight

Wild Bill Hickok begins to establish his reputation as a gunfighter
after he shoots three men during a shootout in Nebraska. Born in
Homer (later called Troy Grove), Illinois, James Butler Hickok moved
to Kansas in 1855 at the age of 18.
There he filed a homestead claim, took odd ...
read more





ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1979
Disco is dealt death blow by fans
of the Chicago White Sox

As the 1970s came to an end, the age of disco was also nearing
its finale. But for all of its decadence and overexposure, disco
didn’t quite die a natural death by collapsing under its own weight.
Instead, it was killed by a public backlash that reached its peak
on July 12, 1979 ...
read more





ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1389
Geoffrey Chaucer is named chief clerk by Richard II

King Richard II appoints Geoffrey Chaucer to the position of chief
clerk of the king’s works in Westminster on July 12, 1389. Chaucer,
the middle-class son of a wine merchant, served as a page in an
aristocratic household during his teens and was associated with
the aristocracy ...
read more


CRIME
1963
The Moors Murderers begin their killing spree

Sixteen-year-old Pauline Reade is abducted while on her way to a
dance near her home in Gorton, England, by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley,
the so-called “Moors Murderers,” launching a crime spree that will last
for over two years. Reade’s body was not discovered until 1987, after ...
read more





CIVIL WAR
1861
Confederacy signs treaties with Native Americans

Special commissioner Albert Pike completes treaties with the
members of the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes, giving the new
Confederate States of America several allies in Indian Territory.
Some members of the tribes also fought for the Confederacy.
A Boston native, Pike went west ...
read more


COLD WAR
1990
Boris Yeltsin resigns from Communist Party

Just two days after Mikhail Gorbachev was re-elected head of
the Soviet Communist Party, Boris Yeltsin, president of the
Republic of Russia, announces his resignation from the Party.
Yeltsin’s action was a serious blow to Gorbachev’s efforts to
keep the struggling Soviet Union ...
read more





INVENTIONS & SCIENCE
1933
First Dymaxion car produced

The first three-wheeled, multi-directional Dymaxion car—designed
by the architect, engineer and philosopher Buckminster Fuller—is
manufactured in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on July 12, 1933.
Born in Massachusetts in 1895, Fuller set out to live his life as
(in his own words) “an ...
read more





WORLD WAR II
1943
Russians halt German advance
in a decisive battle at Kursk

On July 12, 1943, one of the greatest clashes of armor in military
history takes place as the German offensive against the Russian
fortification at Kursk, a Russian railway and industrial center, is
stopped in a devastating battle, marking the turning point in
the Eastern front ...
read more

"Ghost" opens in theaters







1990
July 13




On July 13, 1990, the romantic-thriller Ghost, starring Demi Moore, Patrick Swayze and
Whoopi Goldberg, opens in theaters across the United States. The film, about a woman
who communicates with her murdered husband through a psychic, was a box-office hit
and received multiple Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay.
Goldberg, who played psychic Oda Mae Brown, won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
She became only the second African-American actress to win an Academy Award.
(In 1939, Hattie McDaniel was named Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of a slave
governess in Gone With the Wind.) Written by Bruce Joel Rubin and directed by Jerry Zucker,
Ghost contained the now-iconic love scene, set to “Unchained Melody” by The Righteous Brothers,
in which Sam (Swayze) communes with Molly (Moore) while she is sitting at a potter’s wheel.

The three stars of Ghost all rose to prominence in Hollywood in the 1980s. Patrick Swayze,
born in 1952, was a professional dancer who appeared in such films as The Outsiders (1983)
and Red Dawn (1984) before his breakout performance in Dirty Dancing (1987). After Ghost,
his film credits included Point Break (1991), City of Joy (1992) and To Wong Foo,
Thanks for Everything! Julie Newman (1995). In 2008, Swayze announced that he had been
diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died in September 2009 at the age of 57.


Demi Moore, who was born in 1962, became famous in the 1980s as a member of the so-called
“Brat Pack” cast of St. Elmo’s Fire (1985), which co-starred Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Andrew McCarthy,
Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy and Mare Winningham. Following the success of Ghost, she was cast in
a number of big-budget films in the 1990s, including A Few Good Men (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993),
Striptease (1996) and G.I. Jane (1997). After taking a break from Hollywood for several years,
Moore appeared in 2003’s Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. She was married to the actor Bruce Willis,
with whom she has three daughters, from 1987 to 2000. In 2005, Moore wed the actor
Ashton Kutcher; they divorced in 2013.

Whoopi Goldberg, who was born in 1955, had previously received a Best Actress Oscar nomination
for her role in Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple (1985). Her lengthy list of film credits also
includes Sister Act (1991) and How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998). In 2007, Goldberg replaced
Rosie O’Donnell as a co-host of the daytime talk show The View.




ALSO ON THIS DAY




BLACK HISTORY
2015
Sandra Bland dies in jail
after traffic stop confrontation

On July 10, 2015, Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia pulls over a
28-year-old Black woman, Sandra Bland, for failing to signal a
lane change. After a heated encounter, he arrests her and takes
her to a nearby jail. Three days later, on the morning of July 13,
she is found dead in ...
read more





Black Lives Matter
BLACK HISTORY
2013
The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter
first appears, sparking a movement

Outraged and saddened after the acquittal of George Zimmerman,
the Florida man who killed a Black teenager in 2012, Oakland,
California resident Alicia Garza posts a message on Facebook on
July 13, 2013. Her post contains the phrase "Black lives matter,"
which soon becomes a ...
read more





U.S. PRESIDENTS
1960
John F. Kennedy nominated for presidency

In Los Angeles, California, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts
is nominated for the presidency by the Democratic Party Convention,
defeating Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. The next day, Johnson
was named Kennedy’s running mate by a unanimous vote of the convention. ...
read more





WORLD WAR II
1943
Largest tank battle in history ends

The Battle of Kursk, involving some 6,000 tanks, two million men,
and 5,000 aircraft, ends with the German offensive repulsed by the
Soviets at heavy cost. In early July, Germany and the USSR concentrated
their forces near the city of Kursk in western Russia, site of a ...
read more





FRANCE
1793
Charlotte Corday assassinates
French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat

Jean-Paul Marat, one of the most outspoken leaders of the
French Revolution, is stabbed to death in his bath by
Charlotte Corday, a Royalist sympathizer. Originally a doctor,
Marat founded the journal L’Ami du Peuple in 1789, and its
fiery criticism of those in power was a ...
read more


INVENTIONS & SCIENCE
1978
Henry Ford II fires Lee Iacocca

On July 13, 1978, Ford Motor Company chairman Henry Ford II
fires Lee Iacocca as Ford’s president, ending years of tension
between the two men. Born to an immigrant family in
Pennsylvania in 1924, Iacocca was hired by Ford as an engineer
in 1946 but soon switched to sales, at ...
read more





ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1985
Live Aid concert raises $127 million
for famine relief in Africa

On July 13, 1985, at Wembley Stadium in London, Prince Charles
and Princess Diana officially open Live Aid, a worldwide rock
concert organized to raise money for the relief of famine-stricken
Africans. Continued at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia
(where Joan Baez famously kicked it ...
read more





VIETNAM WAR
1969
George Wallace criticizes President Nixon’s
handling of the war

Former Alabama Governor George Wallace criticizes President
Richard Nixon for his handling of the war and says he favors an
all-out military victory if the Paris talks fail to produce peace soon.
Wallace had run unsuccessfully against Nixon as a third party
candidate in the 1968 ...
read more





SPORTS
1930
First World Cup

On July 13, 1930, France defeats Mexico 4-1 and the United States
defeats Belgium 3-0 in the first-ever World Cup football matches,
played simultaneously in host city Montevideo, Uruguay. The World Cup
has since become the world’s most watched sporting event. After football ...
read more





CRIME
1955
Last woman hanged for murder in Great Britain

Nightclub owner Ruth Ellis is convicted of murdering boyfriend
David Blakely on July 13, 1955. Ellis was later executed by hanging
and became the last woman in Great Britain to be put to death.
Ellis was born in Rhyl, Wales, in 1926.
She left school as a young teenager, had a ...
read more





WESTWARD EXPANSION
1787
Congress enacts the Northwest Ordinance

On July 13, 1787, Congress enacts the Northwest Ordinance,
structuring settlement of the Northwest Territory and creating
a policy for the addition of new states to the nation. The members
of Congress knew that if their new confederation were to survive
intact, it had to resolve ...
read more

A mass murderer leaves eight women dead







1966
July 14




On the night of July 14, 1966, eight student nurses are brutally murdered by Richard Speck at
their group residence in Chicago, Illinois. Speck threatened the women with both a gun and a
knife, tying each of them up while robbing their townhouse. Over the next several hours, Speck
stabbed and strangled each of the young women throughout various rooms of the place. One
young woman, Corazon Amurao, managed to escape with her life by hiding under a bed;
Speck had lost count of his victims.

Richard Speck was an alcoholic and a petty criminal with over 20 arrests on his record by the
age of 25. He had “Born to Raise Hell” tattooed on his forearm and periodically worked on cargo
boats traveling the Great Lakes. On the night of July 13, after drinking heavily at several Chicago
bars, Speck broke into the townhouse for student nurses of the South Chicago Community Hospital.

Speck then used his gun to force three nurses into a bedroom, where he found three more women.
Using nautical knots, he then tied the women’s hands and feet with strips torn from bedsheets.
By midnight, three more nurses had come home only to be tied up as well. Speck assured the
women that he was only going to rob them.

After stealing from the women, he took them into separate rooms, killing them one by one. The
remaining women heard only muffled screams from their roommates. Amurao, who was hiding
under her bed, waited until 6 a.m. the following day before leaving her hiding place. She then
crawled out onto a second-story ledge and screamed for help. Police responding to the cries
obtained a detailed description of Speck from Amurao; the sketch was placed on the front page
of every local newspaper the next morning. Speck, who was hiding out at a dollar-a-night hotel,
slashed his right wrist and left elbow in a suicide attempt on July 16.


Speck was arrested the next day at the Cook County Hospital. With Amurao’s identification and
his fingerprints left at the scene, Speck was convicted and sentenced to death. However, in 1972,
when the Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty law under which he was sentenced, Speck
was re-sentenced to 400 years in prison. He died in prison of a heart attack on December 5, 1991.




ALSO ON THIS DAY



CRIME
2016
Terrorist drives truck through
a Bastille Day celebration

On July 14, 2016, thousands gathered along the seafront of
Nice, France to celebrate Bastille Day—the country's independence
holiday. The mood turned from joy to horror, when a white
truck barreled through a pedestrian-filled closed street. In the end,
86 were dead, including 10 ...
read more





RELIGION
1099
Jerusalem captured in First Crusade

During the First Crusade, Christian knights from Europe capture
Jerusalem after seven weeks of siege and begin massacring the city’s
Muslim and Jewish population. Beginning in the 11th century,
Christians in Jerusalem were increasingly persecuted by the city’s
Islamic rulers, ...
read more


FRANCE
1789
French revolutionaries storm the Bastille

Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops storm and dismantle
the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison that had come to symbolize
the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchs, on July 14, 1789. This
dramatic action signaled the beginning of the French Revolution,
a decade of political ...
read more


SPORTS
1968
Hank Aaron hits 500th homer

On July 14, 1968, Atlanta Braves slugger Henry “Hank” Aaron hits
the 500th home run of his career in a 4-2 win over the San Francisco
Giants. Henry Aaron was born February 5, 1934, in Mobile, Alabama.
The third of eight children, Aaron was a star football player,
third baseman ...
read more





U.S. PRESIDENTS
1913
Future president Gerald R. Ford is born

On July 14, 1913, Gerald R. Ford is born Leslie Lynch King, Jr. in
Omaha, Nebraska. His biological father left the family when Ford
was three years old. His mother’s second husband, Gerald Ford,
adopted the young boy and gave him his name. The young Ford
went on to become the ...
read more


WESTWARD EXPANSION
1882
Gunfighter John Ringo found dead

John Ringo, the famous gun-fighting gentleman, is found dead in
Turkey Creek Canyon, Arizona. Romanticized in both life and death,
John Ringo was supposedly a Shakespeare-quoting gentleman
whose wit was as quick as his gun. Some believed he was college
educated, and his sense of ...
read more





CRIME
1881
Billy the Kid is shot to death

Sheriff Pat Garrett shoots Henry McCarty, popularly known as Billy the Kid,
to death at the Maxwell Ranch in New Mexico. Garrett, who had been
tracking the Kid for three months after the gunslinger had escaped from
prison only days before his scheduled execution, got a tip that ...
read more





COLD WAR
1963
Rupture between USSR and China grows worse

Relations between the Soviet Union and China reach the breaking
point as the two governments engage in an angry ideological debate
about the future of communism. The United States, for its part, was
delighted to see a wedge being driven between the two communist
superpowers. In ...
read more


US GOVERNMENT
1798
Sedition Act becomes federal law

On July 14, 1798, one of the most egregious breaches of the U.S. Constitution
in history becomes federal law when Congress passes the Sedition Act,
endangering liberty in the fragile new nation. While the United States engaged
in naval hostilities with Revolutionary France, known ...
read more


WORLD WAR I
1918
Quentin Roosevelt,
Theodore Roosevelt’s youngest son,
is killed

On July 14, 1918, Quentin Roosevelt, a pilot in the United States Air Service
and the fourth son of former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, is shot down
and killed by a German Fokker plane over the Marne River in France. The
young Roosevelt was engaged to Flora Payne Whitney, ...
read more

Twitter launches








2006
July 15



On July 15, 2006, the San Francisco-based podcasting company Odeo officially releases Twttr—later
changed to Twitter—its short messaging service (SMS) for groups, to the public.

Born as a side project apart from Odeo’s main podcasting platform, the free application allowed users
to share short status updates with groups of friends by sending one text message to a single number (“40404”).
Over the next few years, as Twttr became Twitter, the simple “microblogging” service would explode in
popularity, becoming one of the world’s leading social networking platforms.

Twitter co-founder Evan Williams first made his name in the Silicon Valley tech world by founding the Web
diary-publishing service Blogger, which he sold to Google in 2003 for several million dollars. In 2005, William
co-founded Odeo with another entrepreneur, Noah Glass; that fall, however, Odeo’s main service was made
obsolete when Apple launched iTunes (including a built-in podcasting platform).

After Williams asked the team of 14 employees to brainstorm their best ideas for the flailing startup, one of
the company’s engineers, Jack Dorsey, came up with the concept of a service allowing users to share personal
status updates via SMS to groups of people. By March 2006, they had a working prototype, and a
name—Twttr—inspired in part by bird sounds, and adopted after some other choices (including FriendStalker)
were rejected. Dorsey (@Jack) sent the first-ever tweet (“just setting up my twttr”) on March 21.


At the time Twttr launched to the public in July 2006, it was still a side project of Odeo, while the company’s
primary offering, the podcasting platform, was going nowhere. That fall, according to a report in Business Insider,
Williams bought out the company’s investors, changed Odeo’s name to Obvious Corporation and fired Glass,
whose role in the birth of Twitter (including coming up with its name) wouldn’t become public until years later.

Within six months after the launch, Twttr had become Twitter. Once the service went public, its founders imposed
a 140-character limit for messages, based on the maximum length of text messages at the time; this was later
expanded to 280 characters.

Use of Twitter exploded at the South by Southwest convention in Austin, Texas, in March 2007, when more than
60,000 tweets were sent per day, and grew rapidly from there. By 2013, the New York Times reported that
the company had more than 2,000 employees and more than 200 million active users. That November, when
the company went public, it was valued at just over $31 billion.

Though Twitter’s user base is much smaller than that of Facebook (which has more than 2.9 billion monthly
active users as of 2022), it has increasingly become a source of breaking news and information, especially
for younger users. The company’s prominence rose with the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, who
was outspoken on Twitter throughout his campaign and often tweeted policy decisions or other announcements
during his administration. (The former president was banned from the service in 2021 for using it to incite violence.)
Like other social media companies, Twitter has faced intense pressure to police the content on the site more
closely to prevent harassment, hate speech and disinformation, as well as better protect its users’ privacy.



ALSO ON THIS DAY


NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY
1978
2,800 mile-long walk for Native American justice
concludes in Washington, D.C.

On July 15, 1978, the “Longest Walk”—a 2,800-mile trek for
Native American justice that had started with several hundred
marchers in California—ends in Washington, D.C., accompanied
by thousands of supporters. The intent of the event was to call
attention to issues affecting ...
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SPACE EXPLORATION
1965
Mariner 4 studies Martian surface

The unmanned spacecraft Mariner 4 passes over Mars at an altitude
of 6,000 feet and sends back to Earth the first close-up images of
the red planet. Launched in November 1964, Mariner 4 carried a
television camera and six other science instruments to study Mars
and interplanetary ...longest
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EXPLORATION
1806
Pike expedition sets out across the American Southwest

Zebulon Pike, the U.S. Army officer who in 1805 led an exploring
party in search of the source of the Mississippi River, sets off with
a new expedition to explore the American Southwest. Pike was
instructed to seek out headwaters of the Arkansas and Red rivers
and to investigate ...
read more



CRIME
1997
Fashion designer Gianni Versace murdered
by Andrew Cunanan in killing spree

Spree killer Andrew Cunanan murders world-renowned Italian
fashion designer Gianni Versace on the steps outside his Miami
mansion. Versace is shot twice in the head, and Cunanan flees
the scene. Cunanan had no criminal record before the spring
of 1997, when he began a killing ...
read more





U.S. PRESIDENTS
1971
Nixon announces visit to communist China

During a live television and radio broadcast, President
Richard Nixon stuns the nation by announcing that he
will visit communist China the following year. The statement
marked a dramatic turning point in U.S.-China relations,
as well as a major shift in American foreign policy....y
read more
e


WORLD WAR I
1918
Second Battle of the Marne begins with
final German offensive

On July 15, 1918, near the Marne River in the Champagne
region of France, the Germans begin what would be their
final offensive push of World War I. Dubbed the Second
Battle of the Marne, the conflict ended several days later
in a major victory for the Allies. The German general ...
read more



US POLITICS
1964
Senator Barry Goldwater nominated for president

Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona) is nominated by the
Republican Party to run for president. During the subsequent
campaign, Goldwater said that he thought the United States
should do whatever was necessary to win in Vietnam. At one
point, he talked about the possibility of ...
read more





U.S. PRESIDENTS
1979
Jimmy Carter speaks about a national “crisis in confidence”

On July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter addresses the nation
via live television to discuss the nation’s energy crisis and
accompanying recession. Carter prefaced his talk about energy
policy with an explanation of why he believed the American
economy remained in crisis. He ...
read more


ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1986
Columbia Records drops country legend Johnny Cash after 26 years

The critically acclaimed 2002 biopic Walk The Line depicts the life and
career of Johnny Cash from his initial rise to stardom in the 1950s to
his resurgence following a drug-fueled decline in the 1960s. The
selection of this time span made perfect sense from a Hollywood ...
read more





ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1988
"Die Hard" debuts, makes Bruce Willis a movie star

On July 15, 1988, Die Hard, an action film starring Bruce Willis
as wisecracking New York City cop John McClane, opens in theaters
across the United States. A huge box-office hit, the film established
Willis as a movie star and spawned three sequels.
Die  Hard also became ...
read more





CRIME
1953
A notorious English killer is executed

John Christie, one of England’s most notorious killers, is executed.
Four months earlier, on March 25, the police and a tenant at
10 Rillington Place in West London made an awful discovery:
the bodies of four women in an empty apartment, three in a
hidden cupboard and one more ...
read more





INVENTIONS & SCIENCE
1903
Ford Motor Company takes its first order
   
On July 15, 1903, the newly formed Ford Motor Company
takes its first order from Chicago dentist Ernst Pfenning:
an $850 two-cylinder Model A automobile with a tonneau
(or backseat). The car, produced at Ford’s plant on Mack
Street (now Mack Avenue) in Detroit, was delivered to ...
read more





AMERICAN REVOLUTION
1789
Lafayette selected colonel-general of the
National Guard of Paris

On July 15, 1789, only one day after the fall of the Bastille
marked the beginning of a new revolutionary regime in France,
the French aristocrat and hero of the American War for
Independence, Marie-Joseph Paul Roch Yves Gilbert du Motier,
Marquis de Lafayette, becomes the ...
read more