July 14
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.
July 15
During a live television and radio broadcast, president Richard Nixon stuns the nation by announcing that he will visit communist China the following year. The statement marked a dramatic turning point in U.S.-China relations, as well as a major shift in American foreign policy. – 1971.
July 16
The young American Congress declares the site on the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia will be the nation’s permanent capital. “Washington,” in the newly-designated federal “District of Columbia,” was named after the leader of the American Revolution and the country’s first president: George Washington. – 1790.
Apollo 11, the first U.S. lunar landing mission, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on an historic journey to the surface of the moon. After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 enters into a lunar orbit July 19. – 1969.
U.S. president George W. Bush announces his plan for strengthening homeland security in the wake of the shocking September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.. Bush launches a massive overhaul of the Nation’s security, intelligence, and emergency-response systems through the creation of the White House Office of Homeland Security. – 2002.
July 17
U.S. president Harry S Truman, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and British prime minister Winston Churchill, meet in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam to discuss issues relating to postwar Europe and plans to deal with the ongoing conflict with Japan. The meeting was marked by growing suspicion and tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. – 1945.
Disneyland, Walt Disney’s metropolis of nostalgia, fantasy, and futurism, opens. The $17 million theme park was built on 160 acres of former orange groves in Anaheim, Calif., and soon brought in staggering profits. Today, Disneyland is host to more than 14 million visitors a year, who spend close to $3 billion. – 1955.
July 18
A fire erupts in Rome and spreads rapidly throughout the market area in the center of the city. When the flames finally die out more than a week later, nearly two-thirds of Rome is destroyed. Emperor Nero used the fire as an opportunity to rebuild Rome in a more orderly Greek style. – 64 A.D..
The Spanish Civil War begins as a revolt by right-wing Spanish military officers in Spanish Morocco and spreads to mainland Spain. Within three days, the rebels capture Morocco, much of northern Spain, and several key cities in the south. – 1936.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who first took office in 1933 as America’s 32nd president, is nominated for an unprecedented third term. Roosevelt, of the Democratic Party, eventually would be elected to a record four terms in office, the only U.S. president to be elected to more than two terms. – 1940.
July 19
During Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, a French soldier discovers a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing near the town of Rosetta, about 35 miles north of Alexandria. The irregularly-shaped stone contained fragments of passages written in three different scripts: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Egyptian demotic. The ancient Greek on the Rosetta Stone told archaeologists that it was inscribed by priests honoring the king of Egypt, Ptolemy V, in the second century B.C.E.. More startlingly, the Greek passage announced that the three scripts all were of identical meaning. The artifact thus held the key to solving the riddle of hieroglyphics, a written language that had been “dead” for nearly 2,000 years. – 1799.
July 20
New York City newsboys, many so poor that they were sleeping in the streets, begin a two-week strike. Several rallies drew more than 5,000 newsboys, complete with charismatic speeches by strike leader Kid Blink, who was blind in one eye. The boys had to pay publishers up front for the newspapers; they were successful in forcing the publishers to buy back unsold papers. – 1899.
At 10:56 p.m. EDT, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, speaks these words to more than one billion individuals listening at home: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Stepping off the lunar landing module Eagle, Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon. – 1969.