July 31 ...

In 1556 St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus -- the Jesuit order of Catholic priests and brothers -- died in Rome. In 1777 the Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old French nobleman, was made a major-general in the American Continental Army. In 1875 the 17th president of the US, Andrew Johnson, died in Carter Station, TN at age 66. In 1919 Germany's Weimar Constitution was adopted. In 1945 Pierre Laval, premier of the pro-Nazi Vichy government, surrendered to US authorities in Austria; he was turned over to France, which later tried and executed him. In 1964 the American space probe Ranger 7 transmitted pictures of the moon's surface. In 1972 Democratic vice-presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton withdrew from the ticket with George McGovern following disclosures Eagleton had once undergone psychiatric treatment. In 1991 President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Moscow.

July 30 ...

In 1729 the city of Baltimore was founded. In 1864 Union forces tried to take Petersburg, VA by exploding a mine under Confederate defense lines; the attack failed. In 1945 the battle cruiser USS Indianapolis, which had just delivered components for the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine; only 316 out of 1,196 men survived the sinking and shark-infested waters. In 1975 former Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in suburban Detroit -- although presumed dead, his remains have never been found; also on this day, representatives of 35 countries convened in Finland for a conference on security and human rights that resulted in the Helsinki accords. In 1980 the Israeli Knesset passed a law reaffirming all of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state. In 2004 leaders of the Sept. 11 commission urged senators to embrace their proposals for massive changes to the nation's intelligence structure.

July 29 ...

In 1588 the English soundly defeated the Spanish Armada in the Battle of Gravelines. In 1900 Italian King Humbert I was assassinated by an anarchist; he was succeeded by his son, Victor Emmanuel III. In 1914 transcontinental telephone service began with the first phone conversation between New York and San Francisco. In 1958 President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which created NASA. In 1967 fire swept the USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin, killing 134 servicemen. In 1975 President Ford became the first US president to visit the site of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland as he paid tribute to the victims. In 1980 a state funeral was held in Cairo, Egypt, for the deposed Shah of Iran, who had died two days earlier at age 60. In 1981 Britain's Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. (The couple divorced in 1996.) In 1985 the space shuttle Challenger began an eight-day mission that got off to a shaky start -- the spacecraft achieved a safe orbit even though one of its main engines shut down prematurely after lift-off. In 2004 Sen. John Kerry accepted the Democratic presidential nomination at the party's convention in Boston with a military salute and the declaration: "I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty."

July 28 ...

In 1540 King Henry VIII's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, was executed, the same day Henry married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. In 1655 French dramatist and novelist Cyrano de Bergerac, the inspiration for a play by Edmond Rostand, died in Paris. In 1821 Peru declared its independence from Spain. In 1868 the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, guaranteeing due process of law, was declared in effect. In 1896 the city of Miami, FL, was incorporated. In 1932 Federal troops forcibly dispersed the so-called Bonus Army of World War I veterans who had gathered in Washington to demand money they weren't scheduled to receive until 1945. In 1945 the US Senate ratified the United Nations Charter by a vote of 89-2; also on this day, a US Army bomber crashed into the 79th floor of New York's Empire State Building, killing 14 people. In 1965 President Johnson announced he was increasing the number of American troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000. In 2000 Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was sworn in for an unprecedented third term of office, infuriating demonstrators who set government buildings ablaze. In 2004 the Democratic National Convention in Boston formally nominated John Kerry for president; also on this day, Francis Crick, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who co-discovered the "double-helix" structure of DNA, died in San Diego at age 88.

July 27 ...

In 1789 Congress established the Department of Foreign Affairs, the forerunner of the Department of State. In 1794 French revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre was overthrown and placed under arrest; he was executed the following day. In 1861 Union Gen. George B. McClellan was put in command of the Army of the Potomac. In 1866 Cyrus W. Field finally succeeded, after two failures, in laying the first underwater telegraph cable between North America and Europe. In 1953 the Korean War armistice was signed at Panmunjom, ending three years of fighting. In 1960 Vice President Richard M. Nixon was nominated for president at the Republican National Convention in Chicago. In 1974 the House Judiciary Committee voted 27-11 to recommend President Nixon's impeachment on a charge that he had personally engaged in a "course of conduct" designed to obstruct justice in the Watergate case. In 1980 on day 267 of the Iranian hostage crisis, the deposed Shah of Iran died at a military hospital outside Cairo, Egypt, at age 60.

July 26 ...

In 1775 Benjamin Franklin became Postmaster-General. In 1788 New York became the 11th state to ratify the US Constitution. In 1908 US Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte issued an order creating an investigative agency that was a forerunner of the FBI. In 1945 Winston Churchill resigned as Britain's prime minister after his Conservatives were soundly defeated by the Labor Party. (Clement Attlee became the new prime minister.) In 1947 President Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1952 Adlai E. Stevenson was nominated for president by the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and John J. Sparkman was nominated for vice president; also on this day, Argentina's first lady, Eva Peron, died in Buenos Aires at age 33; and King Farouk I of Egypt abdicated in the wake of a coup led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. In 1953 Fidel Castro began his revolt against Fulgencio Batista with an unsuccessful attack on an army barracks in eastern Cuba. (Castro ousted Batista in 1959.) In 1971 Apollo 15 was launched from Cape Kennedy in Florida. In 1990 President Bush signed into law the Americans with Disabilities Act.

July 25 ...

In 1866 Ulysses S. Grant was named General of the Army, the first officer to hold the rank. In 1868 Congress passed an act creating the Wyoming Territory. In 1943 Benito Mussolini was dismissed as premier of Italy by King Victor Emmanuel III, and placed under arrest. (However, Mussolini was later rescued by the Nazis, and re-asserted his authority.) In 1946 the US detonated an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in the first underwater test of the device. In 1952 Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth of the US. In 1956 51 people died when the Italian liner Andrea Doria sank after colliding with the Swedish ship Stockholm off the New England coast. In 1978 Louise Joy Brown, the first "test tube baby," was born in Oldham, England; she'd been conceived through the technique of in-vitro fertilization. In 1984 Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space as she carried out more than three hours of experiments outside the orbiting space station Salyut 7. In 1994 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan's King Hussein signed a declaration at the White House ending their countries' 46-year-old formal state of war. In 1995 a bomb exploded on a Paris subway, killing seven people and injuring at least 60; also on this day, a UN war crimes tribunal indicted Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, army commander General Ratko Mladic, and 22 other Serbs for war crimes. In 2000 the Middle East summit at Camp David collapsed; also on this day, Texas Gov. George W. Bush selected Dick Cheney to be his running mate.

In 1783 Latin American revolutionary Simon Bolivar was born in Caracas, Venezuela. In 1862 the eighth president of the US, Martin Van Buren, died in Kinderhook, NY. In 1866 Tennessee became the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War. In 1929 President Hoover proclaimed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy. In 1937 the state of Alabama dropped charges against five black men accused of raping two white women in the "Scottsboro Case." In 1959 during a visit to the Soviet Union, Vice President Richard M. Nixon engaged in a "Kitchen Debate" with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at a US exhibition. In 1969 the Apollo 11 astronauts -- two of whom had been the first men to set foot on the moon -- splashed down safely in the Pacific. In 1974 the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Nixon had to turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor. In 1975 an Apollo spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific, completing a mission which included the first-ever docking with a Soyuz capsule from the Soviet Union. In 1995 a suicide bomber set off an explosion in a crowded commuter bus in Tel Aviv, Israel, killing six people.

July 23 ...

In 1885 Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, died in Mount McGregor, NY at age 63. In 1892 Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was born. In 1914 Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia following the killing of Archduke Francis Ferdinand by a Serb assassin; the dispute led to World War I. In 1945 French Marshal Henri Petain who had headed the Vichy government during World War II, went on trial, charged with treason. (He was condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted.) In 1951 Henri Petain died in prison. In 1952 Egyptian military officers led by Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew King Farouk I. In 1977 a jury in Washington, DC convicted 12 Hanafi Muslims of charges stemming from the hostage siege at three buildings the previous March.

July 22 ...

In 1587 a second English colony -- also fated to vanish under mysterious circumstances -- was established on Roanoke Island off North Carolina. In 1796 Cleveland, Ohio was founded by General Moses Cleaveland. In 1916 a bomb went off during a Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco, killing 10 people. In 1933 American aviator Wiley Post completed the first solo flight around the world in seven days, 18 and three-quarter hours. In 1934 a man identified as bank robber John Dillinger was shot to death by federal agents outside Chicago's Biograph Theater. In 1937 the Senate rejected President Roosevelt's proposal to "pack" the Supreme Court by adding more justices. In 1942 gasoline rationing began along the Atlantic seaboard. In 1943 American forces led by General George S. Patton captured Palermo, Sicily. In 1946 Jewish extremists blew up a wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 90 people. In 1975 the House of Representatives joined the Senate in voting to restore the American citizenship of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. In 2004 the September 11 commission issued a report saying America's leaders failed to grasp the gravity of terrorist threats before the devastating attacks of 9/11, but stopping short of blaming President Bush and former President Clinton; also on this day, the Army Inspector General's office released a report on abuses by US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan which found 94 cases of confirmed or alleged abuse and 39 deaths.

July 21 ...

In 1831 Belgium became independent as Leopold I was proclaimed King of the Belgians. In 1861 the first Battle of Bull Run was fought at Manassas, VA, resulting in a Confederate victory. In 1899 author Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, IL; poet Hart Crane was born in Garrettsville, OH. In 1925 the so-called Monkey Trial ended in Dayton, TN, with John T. Scopes convicted of violating state law for teaching Darwin's Theory of Evolution. (The conviction was later overturned.) In 1944 American forces landed on Guam during World War II. In 1949 the US Senate ratified the North Atlantic Treaty. In 1954 the Geneva Accords divided Vietnam into northern and southern entities. In 1955 during the Geneva summit, President Eisenhower presented his "open skies" proposal under which the US and the Soviet Union would trade information on each other's military facilities. In 1961 Captain Virgil "Gus" Grissom became the second American to rocket into a suborbital pattern around the Earth, flying aboard the Liberty Bell 7. In 1969 Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin blasted off from the moon aboard the lunar module.

July 20 ...

In 1810 Colombia declared independence from Spain. In 1861 the Congress of the Confederate States began holding sessions in Richmond, VA. In 1871 British Columbia entered Confederation as a Canadian province. In 1881 Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull, a fugitive since the Battle of the Little Big Horn, surrendered to federal troops. In 1944 President Roosevelt was nominated for an unprecedented fourth term of office at the Democratic convention in Chicago; also on this day, an attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb failed as the explosion at Hitler's Rastenburg headquarters only wounded the Nazi leader. In 1969 Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon as they stepped out of their lunar module. In 1976 America's Viking One robot spacecraft made a successful, first-ever landing on Mars. In 1995 leaders of the University of California voted to drop affirmative action policies on admissions and hiring. In 1999 after 38 years at the bottom of the Atlantic, astronaut Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 Mercury capsule was lifted to the surface. In 2004 former Clinton Administration national security adviser Sandy Berger quit as an informal adviser to Democrat John Kerry's presidential campaign after disclosure of a criminal investigation into whether he'd mishandled classified terrorism documents.

July 19 ...

In 1553 15-year-old Lady Jane Grey was deposed as Queen of England after claiming the crown for nine days. King Henry VIII's daughter Mary was proclaimed Queen. In 1848 a pioneer women's rights convention convened in Seneca Falls, NY. In 1870 the Franco-Prussian war began. In 1941 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill launched his "V for Victory" campaign in Europe. In 1943 allied air forces raided Rome during World War II. In 1969 Apollo 11 and its astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins, went into orbit around the moon. In 1975 the Apollo and Soyuz space capsules that were linked in orbit for two days separated. In 1980 the Moscow Summer Olympics began, minus dozens of nations that were boycotting the games because of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. In 1984 US Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro, D-NY, won the Democratic nomination for vice president by acclamation at the party's convention in San Francisco. In 1985 Christa McAuliffe of New Hampshire was chosen to be the first schoolteacher to ride aboard the space shuttle. (McAuliffe and six other crew members died when Challenger exploded shortly after lift-off the following January.) In 1995 President Clinton firmly rejected calls for dismantling affirmative action programs.

July 18 ...

In AD 64 the Great Fire of Rome began. In 1792 American naval hero John Paul Jones died in Paris at age 45. In 1932 the United States and Canada signed a treaty to develop the St. Lawrence Seaway. In 1936 the Spanish Civil War began. In 1940 the Democratic national convention in Chicago nominated President Roosevelt for an unprecedented third term in office. In 1947 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. In 1955 a summit opened in Geneva, Switzerland, attended by President Eisenhower, Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden and French Premier Edgar Faure. In 1969 a car driven by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha's Vineyard; passenger Mary Jo Kopechne died. In 1984 Walter F. Mondale won the Democratic presidential nomination in San Francisco. In 1994 Tutsi rebels declared an end to Rwanda's 14-week-old civil war.

July 17 ...

In 1821 Spain ceded Florida to the US. In 1898 during the Spanish-American War, Spanish troops in Santiago, Cuba, surrendered to US forces. In 1917 the British royal family adopted the name "Windsor." In 1945 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. In 1975 an Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit in the first superpower linkup of its kind. In 1979 Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza resigned and fled into exile in Miami. In 2000 Bashar Assad, son of Hafez Assad, began a seven-year term as Syria's 16th head of state.