July 8
Paris, the capital city of France, officially celebrates turning 2,000 years old. In fact, a few more candles technically would have been required on the birthday cake, because the City of Lights was most likely founded around 250 B.C.E.. – 1951.
In Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell rings out from the tower of the Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall, summoning citizens to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, by Colonel John Nixon. – 1776.
July 9
Two trains collide outside of Nashville, Tenn. and kill 101 and injure more than 100. Despite the high death toll, the story was mainly ignored by the national press most likely because the vast majority of the casualties were African Americans. – 1918.
July 10
A powerful explosion rips through the Rolling Mill coal mine in Johnstown, Pa. and kills 112 miners, 83 of whom were immigrants from Poland and Slovakia. – 1902.
In Dayton, Tenn., the so-called Monkey Trial begins with John Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law. Within a few days hordes of spectators and reporters had descended on Dayton and preachers set up tents along the city’s main street. – 1925.
The Germans begin the first in a long series of bombing raids against Great Britain, called the Battle of Britain, which lasts three-and-a-half months. – 1940.
July 11
On this day in 1916, in a ceremony at the White House, president Woodrow Wilson signs the Federal Aid Road Act. The law established a national policy of federal aid for highways. – 1916.
Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a German army officer, transports a bomb to Adolf Hitler’s headquarters in Berchtesgaden, in Bavaria, Germany, with the intention of assassinating the Fuhrer. The assassination attempt was postponed until July 20. – 1944.
Fulfilling agreements reached at various war-time conferences, the Soviet Union promises to hand power over to British and U.S. forces in West Berlin. Although the division of Berlin, and of Germany as a whole, into zones of occupation was seen as a temporary postwar expedient, the dividing lines quickly became permanent. The divided city of Berlin became a symbol for Cold War tensions. – 1945.
July 12
A heat advisory is issued in Chicago in a warning of an impending record-breaking heat wave. Temperatures in the city reach 106F and the heat index was above 120 F. By the time the heat breaks a week later, nearly 1,000 residents are dead in Illinois and Wisconsin. – 1995.
Viet Cong ambush Company A of the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, led by U.S.M.C. Lt. Frank Reasoner of Kellogg, Idaho. Reasoner and the five-man point team he was accompanying were cut off from the main body of the company. He ordered his men to lay down a base of fire and then, repeatedly exposing himself to enemy fire, killed two Viet Cong, single-handedly wiped out an enemy machine gun emplacement, and raced through enemy fire to rescue his injured radio operator. Trying to rally his men, Reasoner was hit by enemy machine gun fire and was killed instantly. For this action, Reasoner was nominated for America’s highest award for valor. – 1965.
July 13
At Wembley Stadium in London, Prince Charles and Princess Diana officially open Live Aid, a worldwide rock concert organized to raise money for the relief of famine-stricken Africans. Continued at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia and at other arenas around the world, the 16-hour superconcert was linked globally by satellite to more than a billion viewers in 110 nations. In a triumph of technology and good will, the event raised more than $125 million in famine relief for Africa. – 1985.
July 14
During the First Crusade, Christian knights from Europe capture Jerusalem after seven weeks of siege and begin massacring the city’s Muslim and Jewish population. – 1099.
Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops storm and dismantle the Bastille, a royal fortress that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchs. This dramatic action signaled the beginning of the French Revolution, a decade of political turmoil and terror, in which King Louis XVI was overthrown and tens of thousands of individuals, including the king and his wife, Marie Antoinette, were executed. – 1789.