Wednesday, Aug. 5:

1775: The first Europeans, led by Spain’s Juan de Ayala in his ship the San Carlos, sailed into what is now called San Francisco Bay, anchoring behind Angel Island. Most earlier European explorers failed to notice the strait.

1861: Needing money to pay for the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Revenue Act, imposing the first federal income tax. It set a 3% tax on annual incomes over $800 and lasted 10 years.

1921 : KDKA-AM in Pittsburgh presented the first radio broadcast of a Major League Baseball game.

1962: Actor Marilyn Monroe was found dead at 36 in her Los Angeles home. The iconic sex symbol overdosed on barbiturates. Police concluded 'the mode of death is probable suicide.'

Tuesday, Aug. 4:

1704: Britain captured the tiny but strategically important Rock of Gibraltar during the War of the Spanish Succession. The Rock remains British today.

1914: Great Britain declared war on Germany after the Germans invaded Belgium. The decision also bound its colonies, including India, Australia and Canada.

1944: The Nazis raided the 'Secret Annex' in Amsterdam and sent Anne Frank and its seven other Jewish inhabitants to concentration camps. Only Anne’s father, Otto Frank, survived.

2010: In a victory for gay rights, federal District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Proposition 8, the 2008 referendum that banned same-sex marriage in California with 52% support, violated the 14th Amendment’s promise of equal protection for all.

Monday, Aug. 3:

1492: Columbus sailed the ocean blue, launching from the port of Palos in Spain with the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria. The explorer hoped to find a western sea route to the spice-rich countries of Asia.

1908: Three clergymen discovered a nearly complete Neanderthal skeleton in a cave in La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France. The 'Old Man of La Chapelle' was relatively old when he died. A paleontologist depicted the man as bow-legged and hunched – a stereotype that persists to this day; in fact, the skeleton was that of an arthritic man.

1914: Two days after declaring war on Russia, Germany declared war on France, which had refused to promise neutrality.

1921: Eight Chicago White Sox players were banned for life from Major League Baseball after being accused of taking bribes to lose the 1919 World Series. They had been acquitted at trial the day before, but baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis said that even just meeting with gamblers irrevocably tainted the players.

1923: Vice President Calvin Coolidge became president after the sudden death of President Warren Harding.

1936: American Jesse Owens won the 100-meter dash for the first of his four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics.

Sunday, Aug. 2:

1776 : Most congressional delegates formally signed the Declaration of Independence, about a month after the Second Continental Congress voted to approve it.

1790: Data collection began for the first U.S. Census. The count covered the original 13 states plus what is now Kentucky, Maine, Tennessee and Vermont. It totaled 3.9 million people.

1876 : Western gunfighter 'Wild Bill' Hickok was fatally shot from behind while playing poker in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, now South Dakota. Legend says Hickok had a two-pair hand of black aces and eights, which became known as the 'dead man’s hand.'

1923: President Warren G. Harding died in San Francisco. The cause of death was likely a heart attack, but his wife’s decision to refuse an autopsy and order immediate embalming sparked rumors for a generation.

1934: Chancellor Adolf Hitler became dictator of Germany after President Paul von Hindenburg died.

1990 : Iraq invaded its wealthy neighbor Kuwait. President Saddam Hussein refused to withdraw, setting off the U.S.-led Gulf War.

2018: TikTok became available worldwide after merging with Musical.ly.

Saturday, Aug. 1:

1866: Cherokee chief Tsan-Usdi, known as John Ross in English, died. After unsuccessfully resisting the government’s efforts to seize his tribe’s lands in Georgia, he was forced to lead his people on the Trail of Tears migration west of the Mississippi River.

1943: In Harlem, community anger over racially unjust treatment boiled over into the Harlem Race Riot of 1943 when a Black soldier tried to intervene in the arrest of a Black woman in a hotel lobby for disorderly conduct, and a White police officer shot him.

1944: Anne Frank wrote her last diary entry in Amsterdam’s 'Secret Annex.' The 15-year-old described herself as a 'bundle of contradictions' and wrote that she was 'trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be.'

1981: 'Video Killed the Radio Star' as the Music Television Network – MTV – debuted on cable. July 26

1788: New York became the 11th state after it ratified the U.S. Constitution on a vote of 30-27.

1847: Liberia proclaimed its independence from the United States, making it the first democratic republic in Africa.

1908: The FBI was established.

1945: The Potsdam Declaration was issued by President Harry S. Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and China’s Chairman Chiang Kai-shek. It called for the complete and unconditional surrender of Japan during World War II or the 'alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.'

1948: Military segregation in the U.S. armed forces was abolished.

1990: President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Friday, July 31:

1715: Eleven Spanish treasure ships heading to Spain from Havana, Cuba, sank off the east coast of Florida after a hurricane struck. An estimated 1,000 to 1,500 sailors perished. While the Spanish government was able to recover most of the treasures, some remain lost in the depths of the sea.

1941: With instructions from Adolf Hitler, Nazi leader Hermann Göring ordered SS General Reinhard Heydrich to submit a plan to carry 'out the desired final solution of the Jewish question.' The final solution was the mass systematic genocide of any individual who the Nazi identified as Jewish.

2006: Communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro, suffering from severe health problems, provisionally handed presidential power to his brother Raúl Castro.

Thursday, July 30:

762: This is the proposed date on which Baghdad was founded by Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur.

1956: The phrase 'In God We Trust' became the national motto of the United States after President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a joint resolution by Congress.

1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed amendments to the Social Security Act of 1935 into law, creating two federal health programs: Medicare and Medicaid.

1975: Union leader James 'Jimmy' Hoffa disappeared in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, never to be heard from again. Hoffa, who served as the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, was known to be heavily involved in organized crime and was thought to have been murdered by the Mafia.

Wednesday, July 29:

1588: English naval forces under the command of Lord Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake defeated the supposedly invincible Spanish Armada off the coast of Gravelines, France.

1836: After 30 years of construction, the Arc de Triomphe was officially inaugurated in Paris.

1921: Adolf Hitler assumed leadership of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party.

1954: J.R.R. Tolkien published the first volume of his epic fantasy 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy, 'The Fellowship of the Ring.'

1958: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation to create NASA.

1976: Donna Lauria and Jody Valenti were shot while sitting in Valenti’s car in the Pelham Bay neighborhood of the Bronx, New York. Lauria was killed instantly, but Valenti survived. The incident was the first in a string of shootings that terrorized the city and were perpetrated by David Richard Berkowitz, known as the 'Son of Sam.'

Tuesday, July 28:

1821: José de San Martín and his forces proclaimed Peru’s independence from Spain.

1868: The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was certified and officially adopted. The landmark amendment guaranteed citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, including former slaves.

1914: One month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, and after a breakdown in negotiations, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, effectively starting World War I.

1917: The Silent Parade began on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Organized by the NAACP and community leaders, an estimated 10,000 Black Americans silently marched to Madison Square to protest the escalating violence toward Black people and condemn racial violence and discrimination.

2005: The Irish Republican Army announced that it would end its 36-year armed campaign against British rule and that all its members were 'to assist the development of purely political and democratic programs through exclusively peaceful means.'

Monday, July 27:

1919: A race riot ignited between Black and White residents in Chicago when White beachgoers pelted Eugene Williams and his friends with rocks at a South Side beach. Williams drowned, but police refused to arrest the man responsible for his death. Riots broke out, leading to 38 deaths and more than 500 injuries.

1921: Surgeon Frederick Banting and medical student Charles Best successfully isolated the sugar-regulating hormone insulin in a lab at the University of Toronto. Months later, with the help of biochemist John Macleod, an insulin treatment was created and tested on humans.

1940: Bugs Bunny was first introduced in his fully realized incarnation with the release of the Warner Bros. animated short film 'A Wild Hare.'

1953: The Korean Armistice Agreement was signed by representatives of the United Nations Command, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army and the Korean People’s army, ending armed hostilities and bringing an unofficial end to the Korean War. However, Syngman Rhee, president of South Korea, refused to sign the armistice but instead vowed to observe it.

1974: The first article of impeachment – for obstruction of justice – against President Richard Nixon was passed by the House Judiciary Committee on a vote of 27-11. Two more articles were passed a few days later. Nixon resigned in early August 1974.

1981: A 6-year-old, Adam John Walsh, was abducted from a department store at the Hollywood Mall in Hollywood, Florida. His remains were later found in a canal. His death led his father, John Walsh, to become an advocate for child victims and the creation of the long-running TV show 'America’s Most Wanted.'

1995: The Korean War Veterans Memorial, located on the National Mall in Washington, DC, was dedicated.

1996: A nail-laden pipe bomb exploded in Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta during the Summer Olympics. One person died and over 100 others were injured. The bombing was the first of four perpetrated by Eric Rudolph, who received consecutive life sentences for domestic terrorism.

Sunday, July 26:

1788: New York became the 11th state after it ratified the U.S. Constitution on a vote of 30-27.

1847: Liberia proclaimed its independence from the United States, making it the first democratic republic in Africa.

1908: The FBI was established.

1945: The Potsdam Declaration was issued by President Harry S. Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and China’s Chairman Chiang Kai-shek. It called for the complete and unconditional surrender of Japan during World War II or the 'alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.'

1948: Military segregation in the U.S. armed forces was abolished.

1990: President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Saturday, July 25:

1898: U.S. forces led by Army Gen. Nelson Miles began an invasion of Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War. By mid-August, Nelson had fully secured the island.

1952: With the establishment of its constitution, Puerto Rico attained self-government as an unincorporated commonwealth of the United States, 54 years after it was invaded by U.S. forces.

1985: Representatives for former Hollywood leading man Rock Hudson, who appeared in more than 60 films during his career, announced that he had contracted acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS. His announcement marked the first time a celebrity went public with AIDS and raised awareness for the disease.

Friday, July 24:

1847: After 17 months and hundreds of miles of travel, Brigham Young led a group of 148 Mormon pioneers into Utah’s Valley of the Great Salt Lake.

1866: Tennessee regained congressional representation and became the first Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union after it ratified the 14th Amendment.

1911: With the help of locals in the region, American archaeologist Hiram Bingham III rediscovered the ruins of Machu Picchu, an ancient settlement and citadel of the Incas tucked away in the countryside of the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru.

1929: The Kellogg-Briand Pact went into effect. The pact, signed by most world powers – including France, Germany and the United States – was an international peace agreement in which the signatory states promised that 'disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them' will not be resolved through war. A decade later, World War II began.

1974: In a blow to President Richard Nixon, the U. S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected his claims of 'absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances' and ordered him to surrender White House tapes to the Watergate investigation.

Thursday, July 23:

1840: The Province of Canada, which combined Lower Canada and Upper Canada into a new region, was created by the Act of Union after being passed by the British Parliament.

1921: The Chinese Communist Party was officially established as the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party began in Shanghai.

1962: Jackie Robinson became the first Black player to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

1967: Riots in Detroit began at the predominantly Black neighborhood of Virginia Park. Racial tensions were at a boiling point, and the police raid of an after-hours nightclub sparked the flame that led to looting, the destruction of nearly 1,400 buildings, multiple fires and 43 deaths as well as 342 injuries.

Wednesday, July 22:

1942: The deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp began. Code-named Grossaktion Warsaw by the Nazis, more than 250,000 Jews were killed between the end of July and mid-September.

1943: Allied forces, led by U.S. Gen. George S. Patton, successfully captured Palermo, the regional capital of Sicily and a strategic nexus for the Allied invasion of mainland Italy during World War II.

1991: Serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested by two Milwaukee police officers, Robert Rauth and Rolf Mueller. Tracy Edwards managed to escape and flag down Rauth and Mueller, taking the officers to Dahmer’s apartment. It is there that Mueller discovered Polaroid pictures of Dahmer’s victims.

1992: Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar escaped from police custody near Medellín, Colombia, during a prison transfer from La Catedral, a luxury prison, to a more conventional facility. He remained a fugitive until he was killed during a shootout in December 1993.

Tuesday, July 21 (IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!!! ):

1861: The first major battle of the Civil War began at Manassas Junction, Virginia, about 30 miles southwest of Washington, DC. Called the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas by the Confederates), it ended in a Confederate victory due in part to the disorganization and panic of untrained Union militiamen.

1865: In what was considered the first Western showdown, James 'Wild Bill' Hickok shot and killed Dave Tutt in the market square of Springfield, Missouri, over a heated poker game in which Hickok was humiliated by Tutt.

1873: Jesse James and his gang of outlaws executed the first successful robbery of a moving train in the American West near the town of Adair, Iowa. They made off with between $3,000 and $6,000.

1925: High school teacher John T. Scopes was found guilty of breaking Tennessee’s Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in publicly funded schools. He was fined $100.

1983: Vostok Station, Antarctica, recorded the world’s lowest temperature at minus-128.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Monday, July 20:

1881: Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux leader Sitting Bull surrendered to the U.S. Army at Fort Buford, Dakota Territory, in exchange for amnesty for himself and his people five years after the death of Lt. Col. George Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

1934: A labor strike turned violent as police in Minneapolis fired upon striking truck drivers, killing two and wounding 67.

1968: More than 1,000 athletes from the United States and Canada participated in the world’s first Special Olympics at Soldier Field in Chicago.

1969: Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin became the first humans to step foot on the moon. After the successful landing of the lunar module Eagle at the Sea of Tranquility, Armstrong and Aldrin exited and made the first walk on the moon, with Armstrong famously saying 'That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.' (He later acknowledged that he meant to say "One small step for A man...", which makes better grammatical sense.)

Sunday, July 19:

1845: A fire started in a building housing a whale oil store and a candle factory in Manhattan and spread across what is now the Financial District, causing an explosion and engulfing the southern part of the city. The Great New York City Fire of 1845 destroyed about 345 buildings and killed 30 people, including four firemen.

1848: The women’s suffrage movement began in earnest in the United States with the first ever women’s rights convention held at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls. Hailed as a 'convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman,' it was organized by abolitionists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

1903: The world’s first Tour de France concluded, with cyclist Maurice Garin winning.

1980: More than 60 countries, including the United States, Canada, Japan and China, boycotted the Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan the previous year. It was one of the largest boycotts in Olympic history.

Saturday, July 18:

1804: A duel between then-U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton in Weehawken, New Jersey, ended with Hamilton being fatally wounded.

1925: Adolf Hitler’s first volume of 'Mein Kampf,' the manifesto and blueprint for his Third Reich agenda, was published.

1940: President Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted the nomination for an unprecedented third term.

1960: Harper Lee’s 'To Kill a Mockingbird' was first published.

1966: Six days of riots in Cleveland began after the White owner of the Seventy-Niners Cafe on Hough Avenue refused to give a glass of water to a Black customer as racial tension reached a fever pitch. Four Black residents were killed, 50 people were injured and over 270 arrests were made over the course of the riots.

1969: Sen. Edward 'Ted' Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, drove a car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, into Poucha Pond after attending a party. Kennedy survived, but his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, did not. The senator did not report the incident until 10 hours later. He received a two-month suspended jail sentence and had his driver’s license suspended for a year.

1984: Twenty-one people were killed and 19 others injured when 41-year-old James Huberty opened fire in a McDonald’s restaurant in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego.

1992: Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and HTML markup language, uploaded a photo of an all-women parody band called Les Horribles Cernettes (a play on the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN), making it the first photographic image to be shared on the World Wide Web.

2013: Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection with an estimated debt of between $18 billion and $20 billion, becoming the largest municipality in the United States to do so.

2015: Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, head of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel, escaped from a maximum security prison near Toluca, Mexico, through a tunnel over a mile long. He was recaptured six months later.

Friday, July 17:

1945: The three leaders of the Allied nations – Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin – held the first meeting of the Potsdam Conference to negotiate postwar peace and reconstruction as well as what to do with Germany.

1955: Disneyland officially opened for a press preview in Anaheim, California. It opened the next day to the public.

1996: TWA Flight 800 exploded off the coast of Long Island, New York, killing all 230 aboard, shortly after takeoff from the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.

1998: The International Criminal Court was established in The Hague, Netherlands.

2014: Eric Garner died at age 43 from an illegal chokehold by New York City Police Department officer Daniel Pantaleo. Video of his death, with him saying 'I can’t breathe,' helped spark widespread protests over police brutality.

Thursday, July 16:

1790: The Potomac River site that became Washington, DC, was established to serve as the nation’s permanent capital by President George Washington and Congress as Washington signed the Residence Act.

1942: The Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup (Rafle du Vel’ d’Hiv) began as 13,152 Jews were arrested by the Vichy France government and held at the Vélodrome d’Hiver sports arena in Paris before being deported to concentration camps, including Auschwitz.

1945: The Manhattan Project detonated the world’s first atomic bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

1951: J.D. Salinger’s 'The Catcher in the Rye' was published by Little, Brown and Co.

1969: The world watched as Apollo 11, NASA’s first mission to set astronauts on the moon, was launched from the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida.

1979: Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq after President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr resigned.

1995: Amazon opened for business to the public as an online bookseller.

Wednesday, July 15:

1834: The Spanish Inquisition was definitively dissolved by a decree from Spanish queen regent María Cristina de Borbón.

1870: Georgia was permanently readmitted to the United States after the Civil War.

1942 : Nazi Germany began deporting Jews from the Netherlands to concentration camps and killing centers in Germany and Poland. Over 100,000 people from the country were sent to their deaths.

1965: The Mariner 4, reaching its closest point to Mars, took the first pictures of the surface of the red planet.

1978: The Longest Walk finally reached Washington, DC, ending a five-month pilgrimage initiated by 24 Indigenous people walking from California to the nation’s capital to bring attention to difficulties their people faced and to protest legislation introduced by Congress that would violate and impact their way of life. Thousands joined the group when it reached Washington.

1997: Italian fashion mogul Gianni Versace was murdered on the front steps of his Miami Beach mansion by Andrew Cunanan, who killed at least five people after he traveled from Minnesota to Florida.

2006: Twitter ? Now known as X ? Officially launched to the public.

Tuesday, July 14:

1789: A mob composed of revolutionary insurgents stormed and dismantled the Bastille, a medieval armory and prison in Paris.

1798: Congress passed the Sedition Act, which made it illegal for Americans to 'print, utter, or publish ... any false, scandalous, and malicious writing' about the government, which was widely condemned as a violation of First Amendment rights. It expired in 1801.

1874: A fire broke out in a predominately Jewish and Black neighborhood of Chicago known as the Cheyenne District. Over 8 hours, the fire destroyed 47 acres and burned down 812 buildings, killing 20 people.

1881: Infamous outlaw Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett at Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

1933: Adolf Hitler and the Nazis issued the Law Against the Founding of New Parties, decreeing that all other political parties be abolished in Germany, making the country a one-party dictatorship.

1933: Germany passed the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases, mandating forced sterilization of people with mental or physical disabilities and disorders.

1943: The George Washington Carver National Monument near Diamond, Missouri, was founded, becoming the first U.S. National Monument to honor a Black man.

1970: The Young Lords, a group of Puerto Rican activists, stormed and occupied the Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, New York, for 12 hours. The occupation was a protest highlighting the inadequate health care services provided to the poor neighborhood.

Monday, July 13:

1863: The New York City draft riots began as working-class citizens violently protested a federal military draft for the then ongoing American Civil War. The riots lasted for days, and hundreds of people were killed, with Black residents being a primary target.

1973: Alexander Butterfield, deputy assistant to President Richard Nixon, revealed the existence of a secret Oval Office taping system to Senate investigators.

1977: New York City experienced an electrical blackout lasting nearly 24 hours.

1985: Live Aid played simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. The star-studded concert eventually raised hundreds of millions of dollars for famine relief in Africa.

2015: Sandra Annette Bland, a 28-year-old Black woman, was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas.

2024: Thomas Crooks attempted to assassinate Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Sunday, July 12:

1804: Alexander Hamilton died from an abdominal wound after his duel with U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr.

1861: A treaty was signed by the Chickasaw Nation, the Choctaw Nation and the Confederate States to form an alliance against the Union as well as a certain measure of representation and protection for the Native Americans.

1862: President Abraham Lincoln signed into law a bill creating the Medal of Honor for the U.S. Army.

1943: Soviet forces were largely able to stop the German Eastern Front offensive with a counterattack in southwest Russia.

1967: Violent riots erupted as racial tension reached a boiling point on the streets of Newark, New Jersey. The riots took place over several days and were a part of what became known as the long, hot summer of 1967, which saw more than 150 race riots across the United States. At least 26 people were killed.

2007: Two U.S. Army Apache helicopters conducted a series of airstrikes in Al-Amin al-Thaniyah, New Baghdad, against alleged armed insurgents. However, civilians were killed as collateral, including two journalists. A video of the strikes, titled 'Collateral Murder,' was leaked by Wikileaks almost three years later and led to worldwide condemnation.