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 1790 the first US patent was issued to Samuel Hopkins for his process for making potash and pearl ashes. The substance was used in fetilizer. In 1875 the 17th president of the US, Andrew Johnson, died in Carter Station, TN at age 66. In 1912 economist Milton Friedman was born in New York City. 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 1971 Apollo 15 astronauts become the first to ride in a lunar rover. 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. In 1999 NASA intentionally crashes the Lunar Prospector spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the moon's surface.

Eighty years ago today, in 1916, 2,000 tons of explosives detonated near New York Harbor on the small island of Black Tom, in what was then the largest explosion ever in the US.

Historians believe that the munitions, bound for Britain, were blown up by German agents in what was the first major state-sponsored terrorist event in the US.

From AP:

The sound of the blast was unearthly, and the tremor was felt 100 miles away in Philadelphia. The night sky over New York Harbor turned orange. People were jolted from bed and windows shattered within 25 miles.

The Statue of Liberty, less than a mile away, was damaged by a rain of red-hot shards of steel. Frightened immigrants on Ellis Island were hastily evacuated to Manhattan.

The epicenter of the blast — a small island called Black Tom — all but disappeared in what was then the largest explosion ever in the U.S., on Sunday, July 30, 1916 at 2:08 a.m.

It destroyed about 2,000 tons of munitions parked in freight cars and pierside barges, awaiting transfer to ships and ultimately destined for the World War I battlefields of France.

Evidence pointed to German sabotage, and some historians regard it as the first major terrorist attack on the United States by a foreign party — 85 years before the 9/11 attacks.
...

Black Tom was an especially ripe target, isolated at the end of a mile-long rail causeway and accessible by water. According to Witcover's book, investigators found security was lax and company officials had violated rules for storing explosives.

It was perhaps miraculous that only seven people were killed, among them a barge captain, two policemen and a child tossed from a crib in Jersey City. Black powder, TNT and ammunition continued to "cook off" through the dawn and into daylight.
...

German suspects fled the country after being identified through a secret message, written in lemon juice and visible only when held over a flame. Tracked to Latin America, agent Lothar Witzke told investigators that he and fellow spy Kurt Jahnke had triggered the blast, then nearly drowned in the waves it generated.

July 30 ...

In 1729 the city of Baltimore was founded. In 1818 novelist and poet Emily Bronte was born in Thornton, England. In 1863 Henry Ford was born in Dearborn, MI. In 1864 Union forces tried to take Petersburg, VA by exploding a mine under Confederate defense lines; the attack failed. In 1889 television pioneer Vladimir Zworykin was born in Murom, Russia. In 1890 Casey Stengel was born in Kansas City, MO. In 1916 2,000 tons of explosives detonated near New York Harbor on the island of Black Tom, in what was then the largest explosion ever in the US. Historians believe that the munitions, bound for Britain, were blown up by German agents in what was the first major state-sponsored terrorist event in the US. 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 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid. In 1974 President Richard M. Nixon released subpoenaed White House recordings after being ordered to do so by the US Supreme Court. 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 1997 14 Israelis were killed in a double suicide bombing in a Jerusalem marketplace; Hamas terrorists claimed responsibility for the bombings. 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 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." In 2005 astronomers announced that they had discovered a tenth planet larger than Pluto in orbit around the sun.

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 1794 Maximilien Robespierre was sent to the guillotine and executed. In 1821 Peru declared its independence from Spain. In 1866 children's author Beatrix Potter was born in London. 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 1914 World War I officially began when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. 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 1942 Soviet leader Joseph Stalin issued Order No. 227, under which all soldiers who retreated or otherwise left their positions without orders were to be be immediately killed. 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 1775 Benjamin Rush began his service as the first Surgeon General of the Continental Army. 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 1909 Orville Wright set a record for the longest airplane flight. He was testing the first Army airplane and kept it in the air for 1 hour 12 minutes and 40 seconds. In 1921 researchers at the University of Toronto led by biochemist Frederick Banting announce the discovery of the hormone insulin. In 1940 Bugs Bunny made his official debut in the Warner Bros. animated cartoon "A Wild Hare." In 1953 the Korean War armistice was signed at Panmunjom, ending three years of fighting. In 1955 the Allied occupation of Austria ended. 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. In 1999 the US space shuttle Columbia completed a five-day mission commanded by Air Force Col. Eileen Collins. It was the first shuttle mission to be commanded by a woman. In 2003 it was reported by the BBC that there was no monster in Loch Ness. The investigation used 600 separate sonar beams and satellite navigation technology to trawl the loch. Reports of sightings of the "Loch Ness Monster" began in the 6th century.

From AP:

Irish archaeologists Tuesday heralded the discovery of an ancient book of psalms by a construction worker who spotted something while driving the shovel of his backhoe into a bog.

The approximately 20-page book has been dated to the years 800-1000. Trinity College manuscripts expert Bernard Meehan said it was the first discovery of an Irish early medieval document in two centuries.

"This is really a miracle find," said Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, which has the book stored in refrigeration and facing years of painstaking analysis before being put on public display.

July 26 ...

In 1775 Benjamin Franklin became Postmaster-General. In 1788 New York became the 11th state to ratify the US Constitution. In 1856 playwright George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland. In 1861 Gen. George McClellan assumes command of the Army of the Potomac following a disastrous Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. In 1875 psychiatrist Carl Jung was born in Kesswil, Switzerland. In 1894 writer Aldous Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, England. In 1908 US Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte issued an order creating an investigative agency that was a forerunner of the FBI. In 1941 in response to the Japanese occupation of French Indo-China, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the seizure of all Japanese assets in the United States. 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 1948 President Harry S. Truman signs Executive Order 9981 desegregating the US military. 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. In 2005 the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery, NASA's first scheduled flight mission after the Columbia disaster in 2003.

July 25 ...

In 1861 the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution is passed by the US Congress stating that the war is being fought to preserve the Union and not to end slavery; the measure was repealed in December, 1861. 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 1954 Chicago Bears Hall-of-Fame running back Walter Payton was born in Columbia, MS; he died in 1999. 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 1973 Soviet Mars 5 space probe launched. 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.

From AP:

It seems a typical scene of urban decay: abandoned buildings, crumbling walls, trash and broken wine bottles.

Yet it's more than 1,500 years old. Engineers uncovered these ruins of an ancient Byzantine port during drilling for a huge underground rail tunnel.

... It has grown into the largest archaeological dig in Istanbul's history, and the port's extent is only now being revealed.

Archaeologists call it the "Port of Theodosius," after the emperor of Rome and Byzantium who died in A.D. 395. They expect to gain insights into ancient commercial life in the city, once called Constantinople, that was the capital of the eastern Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires.
...

So far, the 17 archaeologists, three architects and some 350 workers at the site have found what they think might be a church, a gated entrance to the city and eight sunken ships, which have [Dr. Cemal] Pulak particularly excited.

He believes the ships were wiped out all at once in a giant storm. He said the wooden boats, all apparently destroyed around 1000, make up a sort of "missing link" in the history of shipbuilding because of the fusion of old and new techniques in a single boat.

July 24 ...

In 1783 Latin American revolutionary Simon Bolivar was born in Caracas, Venezuela. In 1802 writer Alexander Dumas was born in Paris, France. 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 the Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, went into effect (it was first signed in Paris on August 27, 1928 by most leading world powers). 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 1921 actor Calvert DeForest (known as "Larry 'Bud' Melman") was born in Brooklyn, NY. 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 former Head of State of Vichy France 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 after watching Manhattan Melodrama, bank robber John Dillinger was shot to death by FBI 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 2003 Saddam Hussein's sons Odai and Qusai died after a gunfight with US forces in Northern Iraq. 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; also on this day, poet Hart Crane was born in Garrettsville, OH. In 1920 violinist Isaac Stern was born in Kremenetz, Ukraine. 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. In 2005 four terrorist bombings, occurring exactly two weeks after the similar July 7 bombings, target London's public transportation system. All four bombs fail to detonate and all four suspected suicide bombers escape.

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 1924 Teheran, Persia comes under martial law after the American vice consul, Robert Imbrie, is killed by a religious mob enraged by rumors he had poisoned a fountain and killed several people. In 1933 100,000 march against anti-Semitism in London; also on this day, two-hundred Jewish merchants are arrested in Nuremberg, Germany and paraded through the streets. In 1944 President Roosevelt was nominated for an unprecedented fourth term of office at the Democratic convention in Chicago; also on this day, a group of German officials, led by German Army Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, failed in its attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb, only wounding 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.