Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/July

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(Shia Islam, 2023)

• 1561 – Saint Basil's Cathedral (pictured), located in Red Square, Moscow, was consecrated.
• 1918 – An explosion in the ammunition magazine of the Japanese battleship Kawachi resulted in the deaths of more than 600 officers and crewmen.
• 1963 – Sixteen-year-old Pauline Reade, the first victim of serial killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, disappeared in Gorton, England.
• 1979 – Rowdy fans at Comiskey Park in Chicago stormed the field during a Major League Baseball promotional event at which a crate of disco records was blown up.
• Israel–Lebanon border and attacked Israeli military positions while firing rockets and mortars at Israeli towns, sparking a five-week war
  .

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July 13

• 1260 – Livonian Crusade: Samogitian forces defeated Teutonic knights and the Livonian Order at the Battle of Durbe.
• 1643 – English Civil War: Royalist forces defeated the Parliamentarians at the Battle of Roundway Down near Devizes, Wiltshire.
• 1913 – While on a campaign in Bulgaria, the Romanian Army suffered a cholera outbreak that led to around 1,600 deaths.
• 1973 – Watergate scandal: Under questioning by Senate investigators, White House deputy chief of staff Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of a secret taping system (tape recorder pictured) in the Oval Office.
• 2003 – French Directorate-General for External Security personnel aborted an operation to rescue Colombian politician Íngrid Betancourt from FARC guerrillas, resulting in a political scandal.

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July 14: Bastille Day in France (1789); Festino di Santa Rosalia begins in Palermo, Italy

• 1791 – The Priestley Riots (depicted), targeting religious dissenters such as Joseph Priestley, began in Birmingham, England.
• 1902 – The medieval St Mark's Campanile in Venice collapsed, also demolishing the Loggetta del Sansovino.
• 1950 – Early in the Korean War, North Korean troops began attacking the headquarters of the American 24th Infantry Division in Taejon, South Korea.
• 1987 – More than 100 mm (3.9 in) of rain fell in a two-and-a-half-hour period in parts of Montreal, causing severe flooding.
• 2016 – A man deliberately drove a truck into crowds in Nice, France, resulting in 86 deaths.

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July 15

• 1815 – Aboard HMS Bellerophon, French emperor Napoleon (pictured) surrendered to Royal Navy captain Frederick Lewis Maitland, concluding the Napoleonic Wars.
• 1870 – Manitoba was established as a province of Canada following the transfer of Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company.
• First Polish Army
  .
• 1983 – Sega's first home video game console, the SG-1000, was released in Japan.
• 2009 – Caspian Airlines Flight 7908 crashed in northwestern Iran, killing all 168 people aboard.

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July 16

• 1232 – Muhammad ibn Yusuf (pictured), who later established the Emirate of Granada, the last Muslim state in Spain, was elected the ruler of Arjona.
• 1790 – President George Washington signed the Residence Act, selecting a new permanent site along the Potomac River for the capital of the United States, which later became Washington, D.C.
• 1931 – Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie promulgated the nation's first modern constitution.
• crashed in thick fog in the Celtic Sea
  , killing 20 of the 26 people on board.
• 2013 – At least 23 students died and dozens more fell ill at a primary school in the Indian state of Bihar after consuming a Midday Meal that was contaminated with pesticide.

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July 17: Marine Day in Japan (2023); Constitution Day in South Korea (1948); World Emoji Day

• 1771 – Dene men, acting as guides to Samuel Hearne on his exploration of the Coppermine River in present-day Nunavut, Canada, massacred a group of about twenty Copper Inuit.
• 1863 – The New Zealand Wars resumed as British forces led by General Duncan Cameron began the invasion of the Waikato.
• Nicholas II and his family (pictured) were murdered by Bolsheviks at Yekaterinburg
  .
• 1968 – Led by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party overthrew Iraqi president Abdul Rahman Arif in a bloodless coup.
• 2007 – TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overran the runway at Congonhas Airport in São Paulo, Brazil, killing 199 people.

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July 18

• 1290 – King Edward I issued an edict to expel all Jews from England.
• 1723 – Johann Sebastian Bach directed the first performance of his cantata Erforsche mich, Gott, und erfahre mein Herz in Leipzig.
• 1863 – American Civil War: Led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the first African-American military units in the Union Army, spearheaded an assault (pictured) on Fort Wagner, South Carolina.
• 1949 – Francisco Javier Arana, the chief of the Guatemalan armed forces, was killed in a shootout with supporters of President Juan José Arévalo.
• 2019 – An arson attack at the studio of Kyoto Animation in Japan led to the deaths of 36 people.

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July 19: Islamic New Year (2023, 1445 AH)

• 998 – Arab–Byzantine wars: After initial Byzantine gains at the Battle of Apamea, a lone Kurdish rider killed Byzantine commander Damian Dalassenos, allowing Fatimid troops to turn the tide of the battle.
• 1843 – SS Great Britain, the first ocean-going ship with both an iron hull and a screw propeller, was launched (pictured) in Bristol, England.
• 1845 – A fire in Manhattan, New York, destroyed 345 buildings, killed 30 people, and caused at least $5 million in damage.
• 1903 – French cyclist Maurice Garin won the first edition of the Tour de France.
• 2014 – Gunmen perpetrated an assault against an Egyptian military checkpoint in the Libyan Desert, killing 22 soldiers.

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July 20

• 1333 – Second War of Scottish Inde­pen­dence: The Scottish-held town of Berwick-upon-Tweed surrendered to English forces, ending a siege led by King Edward III.
• 1867 – The United States Congress established the Indian Peace Commission to seek peace treaties with a number of Native American tribes.
• 1917 – The prime minister of Serbia, Nikola Pašić, and the president of the Yugoslav Committee, Ante Trumbić, signed the Corfu Declaration, agreeing to seek the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.
• 1968 – The first games of the Special Olympics (athletes pictured), for athletes with intellectual disabilities, were held at Soldier Field in Chicago.
• 2001 – The animated film Spirited Away, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, was released, becoming the highest-grossing film in Japanese history until 2020.

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July 21: Belgian National Day (1831)

• 365 – A large earthquake occurred near Crete, triggering a tsunami, and causing widespread destruction around the eastern Mediterranean region.
• 905 – Louis III, Holy Roman Emperor, was captured and blinded during his attempt to restore Carolingian power over Italy by King Berengar I.
• 1918 – World War I: An Imperial German Navy U-boat opened fire on a small convoy of barges and defending aircraft near the American town of Orleans, Massachusetts.
• 2013 – Nour Ahmad Nikbakht, an Iranian diplomat in Yemen, was kidnapped by al-Qaeda militants and held hostage for the next two years.
• 2019 – People returning from anti-extradition bill protests were attacked (pictured) by suspected triad members in Yuen Long, Hong Kong, leaving 45 people injured.

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July 22: Feast day of Saint Mary Magdalene (Christianity)

• 1298 – First War of Scottish Independence: English forces led by Edward I defeated William Wallace's Scottish troops at the Battle of Falkirk.
• 1864 – American Civil War: Confederate forces unsuccessfully attacked Union troops at the Battle of Atlanta.
• 1894 – Jules-Albert de Dion (pictured) finished first in the world's first motor race, but did not win as his steam-powered car was against the rules.
• 1963 – The United Kingdom granted self-government to Sarawak.
• 1975 – Stanley Forman took the Pulitzer Prize–winning photo Fire Escape Collapse, which spurred action to improve the safety of fire escapes across the United States.

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July 23: Birthday of Haile Selassie (Rastafari)

• 1319 – A fleet led by the Knights Hospitaller sank 22 of 28 ships of the Turkish Aydinid emirate.
• 1891 – During a visit of the French Navy to Kronstadt in Russia, the two nations reached a secret agreement on a joint response to any future war in Europe.
• 1921 – The first National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party opened in a house in Shanghai.
• 1968 – A shootout between police and a Black power group began in Cleveland, Ohio, sparking three days of rioting.
• pardoned by the Governor
  .
• 2001 – Megawati Sukarnoputri (pictured) became the first female president of Indonesia after her predecessor Abdurrahman Wahid was removed from office.

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July 24: Pioneer Day in Utah, United States (1847)

• 1567 – Mary, Queen of Scots, was forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son, James VI.
• 1920 – Franco-Syrian War: At the Battle of Maysalun forces of the Arab Kingdom of Syria were defeated by a French army moving to occupy the territory allocated to them by the San Remo conference.
• 1923 – The Treaty of Lausanne was signed to settle part of the partition of the Ottoman Empire, establishing the boundaries of Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey.
• 1967 – During a speech in Montreal, French president Charles de Gaulle (pictured) declared "Long live free Quebec!", a statement that was interpreted as support for Quebec independence from Canada.
• 1998 – A gunman entered the United States Capitol and opened fire, killing two police officers.

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July 25: National Day of Galicia

• 1547 – Henry II was crowned King of France at Reims Cathedral.
• 1591 – Eighty Years' War: Dutch and English forces relieved the siege of Knodsenburg in the Spanish Netherlands, having defeated the Duke of Parma's army in the field.
• 1893 – The Corinth Canal was formally opened, bisecting the narrow Isthmus of Corinth in Greece to connect the Ionian Sea's Gulf of Corinth with the Aegean Sea's Saronic Gulf.
• 1950 – Korean War: After American troops withdrew, North Korean forces captured the village of Yongdong in South Korea.
• 2007 – Pratibha Patil (pictured) was sworn in as the first female president of India.

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July 26: Independence Day in Liberia (1847)

• 1778 – On the orders of Catherine the Great the first of tens of thousands of Greek and Armenian Christians were removed from Crimea and resettled in Pryazovia.
• 1882 – Boer mercenaries established the Republic of Stellaland (later flag pictured) in land claimed by the United Kingdom as part of British Bechuanaland.
• 1953 – In Short Creek, Arizona, police conducted a mass arrest of approximately 400 Mormon fundamentalists for polygamy.
• 1993 – Asiana Airlines Flight 733 crashed into a mountain during a failed attempt to land at Mokpo Airport, South Korea, leading to the deaths of 68 of the people on board.
• 2012 – The New Irish Republican Army was formed from a merger of a number of dissident republican militant groups.

(d. 1988)