This Week in History - July 23 - 29

Welcome to this week in history.

July 23

1798 - Napoleon captures Alexandria, Egypt
1829 - William Austin Burt patents America's first "typographer" (typewriter)
1851 Treaty of Traverse des Sioux signed by Sioux Indians and US
1888 John Boyd Dunlop applies to patent pneumatic tire
1904 Ice cream cone created during St Louis World Fair - the 1st cone reputedly by Charles E. Menches
1920 British East Africa renamed Kenya and becomes a British crown colony
1921 Chinese communist party forms under guidance of Henk Sneevliet
1931 Ashmore & Cartier Is in Indian Ocean transferred to Australia
1934 Bradman completes 304 at Headingley, 430 mins, 43 fours 2 sixes
1943 Battle of Koersk, USSR ends in Nazi defeat (6,000 tanks)
1956 Bell X-2 rocket plane sets world aircraft speed record of 3,050 kph
1967 First successful liver transplant, on 19 month old Julie Rodriguez by Dr Starzl at the University of Colorado
2000 87th Tour de France: no winner (Lance Armstrong disqualified)

July 24

1534 Jacques Cartier lands in Canada, claims it for France
1567 Mary Queen of Scots is forced to abdicate; her 1-year-old son becomes King James VI of Scots
1758 George Washington elected to Virginia House of Burgesses representing Frederick County
1793 France passes 1st copyright law
1824 Harrisburg Pennsylvanian newspaper publishes results of 1st public opinion poll, with a clear lead for Andrew Jackson
1847 Brigham Young and his Mormon followers arrive at Salt Lake City, Utah
1880 1st commercial hydroelectric power plant in the world begins generating electricity in Grand Rapids, Michigan
1905 Tsar Nicholas II (Russia) and Emperor Wilhelm II (Germany) sign the Björkö Treaty, whereby each country agrees to come to the other's defense if attacked by European powers
1911 American explorer Hiram Bingham discovers Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas
1917 Trial of Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari begins in Paris for allegedly spying for Germany and thus causing the deaths of 50,000 soldiers
1941 Nazis kill entire Jewish population of Grodz, Lithuania
1965 Bob Dylan release "Like a Rolling Stone"
1969 Apollo 11 returns to Earth
1987 IBM-PC DOS Version 3.3 (updated) released
2001 Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last Tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, is sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, becoming the first monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office.
2005 92nd Tour de France: no winner; Lance Armstrong retires after winning a record seventh consecutive victory but disqualified in 2012 for doping

July 25

306 Constantine I is proclaimed Roman Emperor by his troops
1670 Austrian Emperor Leopold I expels 4,000 Jews from Vienna
1814 English engineer George Stephenson introduces his first steam locomotive, a travelling engine designed for hauling coal on the Killingworth wagonway named Blücher
1832 1st railroad accident in US, Granite Railway, Quincy, Massachusetts, kills 1
1837 The first commercial use of an electric telegraph successfully demonstrated by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone between Euston and Camden Town in London
1917 Sir Thomas Whyte introduces the first income tax in Canada as a "temporary" measure (lowest bracket is 4% and highest is 25%).
1923 German mark devalued to 600,000 Mark=$1
1941 FDR bans selling benzine/gasoline to Japan
1944 1st jet fighter used in combat (Messerschmitt 262)
1946 At Club 500 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis stage their first show as a comedy team
1965 Bob Dylan is booed by sections of the crowd at the Newport Folk Festival for performing with an electric guitar, beginning of folk-rock
1966 Brian Jones final perfomance as a Rolling Stone
1994 Jordan and Israeli end 46 year state of war
2000 Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde supersonic passenger jet, F-BTSC, crashes just after takeoff from Paris killing all 109 aboard and 4 on the ground.
2017 Sperm counts have halved in last 40 years says research published in "Human Reproduction Update" journal

July 26

1469 Wars of the Roses: Battle of Edgecote Moor - Pitting the forces of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick against those of King Edward IV
1755 Giacomo Casanova is arrested in Venice for affront to religion and common decency and imprisoned in the Doge's Palace
1775 US Continental Congress creates United States Post Office (U.S.P.O.) in Philadelphia under Benjamin Franklin
1858 Baron Lionel de Rothschild becomes the 1st Jewish person elected to the British Parliament
1865 The capital of New Zealand moves from Auckland to Wellington
1903 1st automobile trip across the United States (San Francisco to New York) completed by Horatio Nelson Jackson and Sewall K. Crocker
1914 Irish Volunteers unload a shipment of 1,500 rifles and 45,000 rounds of ammunition arrive from Germany aboard Erskine Childers' yacht the Asgard; British troops fire on jeering crowd on Bachelors Walk, Dublin, killing three citizens
1944 The first German V-2 rocket hits Great Britain (nicknamed "gasometer").
1945 Physicist Raemer Schreiber and Lieutenant Colonel Peer de Silva depart Kirtland Army Air Field to transport the plutonium core for the Fat Man bomb (bombing of Nagasaki) to the island of Tinian where the bomb is assembled
1947 President Truman signs National Security Act (1947), establishing Department of Defense, CIA, National Security Council and Joint Chiefs of Staff
1948 President Harry Truman issues Executive Order No. 9981 to desegregate the US armed forces, directing "equality of treatment and opportunity" in the military
2017 Great Britain announces it will ban gasoline and diesel cars by 2040

July 27

1586 Sir Walter Raleigh brings first tobacco to England from Virginia
1789 US Congress establishes Department of Foreign Affairs now referred to as the State Department
1836 The ship the "Duke of York" arrives with the first colonists at Nepean Bay, Kangaroo Island, South Australia
1890 Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh shoots himself in Auvers-sur-Oise, dies of injuries 2 days later
1909 Orville Wright tests 1st US Army airplane, flying 1h12m40s
1921 Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolate insulin at the University of Toronto
1940 Billboard magazine starts publishing bestseller charts
1940 Bugs Bunny, Warner Bros. cartoon character created by Tex Avery, Bob Givens (Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series), first debuts in "Wild Hare"
1945 US Communist Party forms
1948 Bradman's 29th and last Test Cricket century, part of winning 3-404
1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs a bill requiring cigarette makers to print health warnings on all cigarette packages about the effects of smoking
1972 The F-15 Eagle flies for the first time.
1999 Tony Hawk is the first skateboarder to land a "900"
2012 Queen Elizabeth II opens the 30th Olympics in London, United Kingdom (with some help from 007)
2015 The Shanghai Composite Index drops 8.5% in one day
2017 Amazon founder Jeff Bezos briefly becomes world's richest man at $91.4bn overtaking Bill Gates for half a day

July 28

1586 Sir Thomas Harriot introduces potatoes to Europe on return to England
1858 First use of fingerprints as a means of identification is made by Sir William James Herschel of the Indian Civil Service
1866 Metric system becomes a legal measurement system in US
1868 US Secretary of State William H. Seward announces 14th Amendment ratified by states, grants citizenship to ex-slaves
1893 A petition organised by Kate Sheppard, demanding women's suffrage, is delivered to New Zealand's parliament; signed by over 25,000 women, a 5th of the adult European female population
1900 Hamburger created by Louis Lassing in Connecticut
1943 US President FDR announces end of coffee rationing in US
1951 Walt Disney's animated musical film "Alice In Wonderland" released
1965 LBJ sends 50,000 more soldiers to Vietnam (total of 125,000)
2017 US Senate vote for "skinny" repeal of Obamacare fails 51-49 when John McCain casts deciding vote against

July 29

1609 Samuel de Champlain shoots and kills two Iroquois chiefs at Ticonderoga, New York setting the stage for French-Iroquois conflicts for the next 150 years
1836 Inauguration of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris
1899 1st motorcycle race, Manhattan Beach, NY
1905 US Secretary of State William Howard Taft makes secret agreement with Japanese Prime Minister Katsura agreeing to Japanese free rein in Korea in return for non-interference with the US in the Philippines
1907 Sir Robert Baden-Powell forms Boy Scouts in England
1921 Adolf Hitler becomes leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party
1923 Albert Einstein speaks on pacifism in Berlin
1928 Test footage first created for Walt Disney's "Steamboat Willie" with Mickey Mouse
1938 Comic strip "Dennis the Menace," 1st appears
1949 BBC radio begins broadcasting
1954 Publication of "Fellowship of the Ring" 1st volume of "Lord of the Rings" by J. R. R. Tolkien published by George Allen and Unwin in London
1958 US President Eisenhower signs into law National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958
1973 $180,000 in Led Zeppelin receipts are robbed from NY Hilton
1975 Ford became 1st US President to visit Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz
2015 Part of missing airline MH370 is found on the island of Reunion
2017 Terrorist plot to bring down a plane averted in Sydney, Australia, 4 arrested