This Week in History - July 16 - 22

Welcome to this week in History.

July 16

1054 - Three Roman legates fracture relations between Western and Eastern Christian churches by placing invalid Papal Bull of Excommunication on altar of Hagia Sophia during liturgy. Often dated start of the East-West Schism.

1429 - Joan of Arc and the French army enter the city of Rheims

1439 - Kissing is banned in England (to stop the Black Death from spreading)

1548 - La Paz, Bolivia, is founded

1661 - 1st banknotes in Europe are issued by Bank of Stockholm

1790 - Congress declares the city of Washington in the District of Columbia, the permanent capital of the United States

1901 - The Fawcett Commission headed by Millicent Fawcett is established as a result of an outcry against the treatment of Afrikaners in concentration camps during the South African War

1942 - Jews start to be transported from Holland to extermination camp

1951 - Novel "Catcher in Rye" by J. D. Salinger published by Little Brown and Company

1969 - Apollo 11 launched, carrying 1st men to land on Moon

1979 - Premier/pres al-Bakr of Iraq is succeeded by Saddam Hussein

1999 - John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette are killed in a plane crash off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. The Piper Saratoga aircraft was piloted by Kennedy.

2007 - An earthquake of magnitude 6.8 and aftershock of 6.6 occurs off the Niigata coast, Japan, killing 8 people with at least 800 injured and damaging a nuclear power plant.

July 17

180 - 6 inhabitants of Carthage, North Africa executed for being Christians. Earliest record of Christianity in this part of the world.

1762 - Catherine II becomes tsarina of Russia following the murder of Peter III

1774 - Captain James Cook arrives in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu)

1890 - Cecil Rhodes becomes Premier of Cape Colony

1917 - Royal Proclamation by King George V changes name of British Royal family from German Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor

1918 - The Romanov royal family and several of their retainers are executed by a Bolshevik firing squad in the basement of Ipatiev House, in Yekaterinburg, Siberia

1936 - Spanish generals Francisco Franco and Emilio Mola lead a right-wing uprising, starting the Spanish Civil War

1945 - Potsdam Conference (Truman, Stalin, Churchill) holds 1st meeting

1954 - Construction of Disneyland commences

1955 - Arco, Idaho, becomes 1st US city lit by nuclear power

1984 - US passes National Minimum Drinking Age Act, prohibiting under 21's from buying or possessing alcohol as a condition of receiving State highway funds

1994 - Hulk Hogan beats Ric Flair to win WCW wrestling championship

1995 - Forbes Magazine announces Bill Gates is the richest man in world with a net worth of $12.9 billion dollars

1998 - Russia buries Tsar Nicholas II and family, 80 years after they died

2004 - Martha Stewart is sentenced to five months in prison plus five months in home confinement for lying to federal investigators

2014 - Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is shot down over Eastern Ukraine by a Buk surface-to-air missile launched from pro-Russian separatist-controlled territory, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board

July 18

64 - Great Fire of Rome begins under the Emperor Nero

1872 -The Ballot Act introduces the secret ballot in elections in Britain; previously votes made openly

1925 - Adolf Hitler publishes Mein Kampf (original title was the catchy "Four and a Half Years (of Struggle) Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice")

1938 - Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan arrives in Ireland after a 28 hours flight, supposedly left NY flying for California

1947 - King George VI signs Indian Independence Act

1955 - 1st electric power generated from atomic energy sold commercially

1968 - The Intel Corporation is founded in Santa Clara, California

1976 - Nadia Comăneci becomes the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics at 1976 Summer Olympics

1994 - "Kiss From a Rose" released by Seal (Grammy Record and Song of the year)

1995 - "Dreams from My Father", a memoir by Barack Obama is published by Times Books

2012 - Kim Jong-un is officially appointed Supreme Leader of North Korea and given the rank of Marshal in the Korean People's Army

2015 - PayPal is spun off from eBay as a separate publicly traded company on the NASDAQ

July 19

1692 - 5 more people are hanged for witchcraft (20 in all) in Salem, Massachusetts

1836 - HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin arrives in Ascension Island

1843 - The steamship SS Great Britain is launched, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, is the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull or screw propeller and the largest vessel afloat in the world

1930 - Richard E. Byrd, Laurence McKinley Gould, and their polar expedition team return to the United States following the first exploration of the interior of Antarctica

1941 - 1st US Army flying school for black cadets dedicated (Tuskegee, Alabama)

1941 - Tom and Jerry first appear under their own names in cartoon "The Midnight Snack" by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera

1969 - Apollo 11 goes into Moon orbit

1993 - President Clinton fires FBI director William Sessions

2017 - "Depacito" by Luis Fonsi ft. Daddy Yankee becomes the most streamed song ever, played 4.6 billion times

July 20

1304 - Wars of Scottish Independence: Fall of Stirling Castle - King Edward I of England takes the last rebel stronghold of the war

1881 - Sioux Indian Chief Sitting Bull, surrenders to US federal troops

1921 - Congresswoman Alice Mary Robertson becomes the first woman to preside over the floor of US House of Representatives

1940 - Billboard publishes its 1st singles record chart (#1 is "I'll Never Smile Again" by Tommy Dorsey)

1944 - Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt led by German army officer Claus Von Stauffenberg

1969 - 1st Moon Landing: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin step out from Apollo spacecraft 11, 530 million watch live global broadcast

1976 - US Viking 1 lands on Mars at Chryse Planitia, 1st Martian landing

July 21

1865 - In market square of Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok shoots and kills Davis Tutt in what is regarded as the first true western showdown

1873 - Jesse James and James Younger gang's 1st train robbery (Adair Iowa)

1897 - Tate Gallery opens in England

1919 - Anthony Fokker's establishes airplane factory at Hamburg and Amsterdam

1969 - Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to step on the Moon at 2:56:15 AM (GMT)

1974 - US House Judiciary approves two Articles of Impeachment against President Richard Nixon

1990 - Pink Floyd's "The Wall" is performed where the Berlin Wall once stood

2007 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in the series by J. K. Rowling is published worldwide. 11 million copies sell in 24 hrs

2011 - NASA's Space Shuttle program ends with the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-135

July 22

1775 - George Washington takes command of the Continental Army

1918 - Lightning kills 504 sheep in Utah's Wasatch National Park

1942 - Warsaw Ghetto Jews (300,000) are sent to Treblinka Extermination Camp

1991 - Jeffrey Dahmer confesses to killing 17 men in 1978

1992 - Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar escapes prison