On July 14, 1874, the "second Chicago fire" kills 20 people and destroys about 600 buildings in the city's Loop district. Accounts differ on the cause of the fire. Coming just 3 years after the "Great Chicago fire," the National Board of Underwriters demanded immediate changes to the city's fire fighting standards, and also recommended insurance writers cancel fire policies in the city until their reforms were implemented. Many did so, but the city was quick to respond to the demands, and insurance was resumed within a few months. On July 14, 1865, the first successful ascent of the Matterhorn is completed. One of the tallest peaks in Europe at 14,700 feet, the distinctive Matterhorn (which straddles the Swiss-Italian border) vexed Alpine climbers who had conquered taller peaks in the Alps decades earlier. Twenty-five year old English climber Edward Whymper, leading an expedition of 6 (including 3 novice climbers) and a local father-and-son guide team, started up the Swiss face a day earlier, barely beating a second expedition led by Italian Jean-Antoine Carrel, which was just 200 feet below the summit on the Italian side when Whymper reached the top. But the story was not complete. Barely an hour after beginning their descent (all 8 tied together), one of the novices slipped. This started a chain reaction fall, but the rope broke (Whymper would endure unfounded accusations of having cut the rope to save himself) and all but Whymper and the father half of the guide team fell to their deaths. (the Matterhorn seen from the Swiss town of Zermatt, start point for the climb) On July 14, 2015, the New Horizons space probe passes within 7,800 miles of the dwarf planet Pluto. Launched from Cape Canaveral in 2006, New Horizons would make a close pass of Jupiter a year later, getting a gravity assist from the giant to propel it on to Pluto. It reaches its target on the anniversary of Mariner 4's 1965 flyby of Mars, NASA's first probe mission to another planet. With Pluto successfully reached (it would take about 3 months for New Horizons' data to reach Earth), NASA declared its "initial survey" of the Solar System complete. Since leaving Pluto, New Horizons has made 2 flybys of objects in the Kuiper Belt, and could make one more before its power supply is exhausted, which should happen in 2030.
On July 17, 1453, French victory at the Battle of Castillon effectively ends the Hundred Years' War. On July 8, a French army under King Charles VII laid siege to the English-held town of Castillon in the Gascony region. Charles deployed his siege in anticipation of the region's real threat, an English army under the Earl of Shrewsbury, John Talbot, at the nearby town of Bourdeaux. Sure enough, Talbot marched from Bordeaux to relieve Castillon and was massacred. English casualties exceeded 4,000 (some estimates put it closer to 6,000) including Talbot, who was beheaded as he lay pinned beneath his wounded horse. French losses were barely 100. The defeat left the French in control of Gascony, previously England's stronghold on the Continent, and deprived the English of their best military mind in Talbot. By October the war was over. In 1902, Brookyln-based Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing & Publishing Company is seeking a solution to the high temperature, high humidity problems in its workspace. In the summer it would become so hot the paper would grow and shrink in the printing presses. On July 17, Cornell-educated engineer Willis Carrier submits drawings to Sackett-Wilhelms for a proposed "air conditioning" system, that will control temperature, humidity and ventilation while also cleansing the air in the pressroom. His proposal is accepted, and four years later Carrier would receive his first patent on an air conditioning system, and formed the Carrier Corporation in Newark, NJ in 1915. The Great Depression and then WWII would slow the company's development, but Carrier took off in the post-war boom of the 1950's. Carrier today employs 53,000 people and is still considered the world leader in HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) systems.
On July 18, 1936, the Spanish military launches its nation's Civil War. The Spanish government had swung like a pendulum in free elections for six years, voting out the monarchy in favor of a liberal republic in 1931, then going conservative in '33 and finally voting in a leftist movement in February of '36. General Francisco Franco, who had defended the government from a socialist revolution in '35, was exiled to an obscure command in the Canary Islands, and immediately began organizing a revolt of his own, based in Spanish holdings in Morocco. By March 1939, Franco had established a fascist dictatorship in Spain, holding power until his death in 1975, On July 18, 1870, the First Vatican Council formalizes the doctrine of papal infallibility. It is a concept the church had recognized for centuries without ever defining, and states that when the pope speaks on matters of church doctrine in his capacity as Pastor of all Christianity, he does so infallibly. Despite this, Catholics only universally acknowledge two such infallible matters; that of Immaculate Conception (Jesus' mother Mary was conceived free of original sin) and the Assumption (Mary ascended directly to heaven on "the completion of her earthly life). (Titian's "Assumption of the Virgin", painted in 1518) On July 18, 1951, "Jersey" Joe Walcott knocks out Ezzard Charles in the 7th round to become World Champion. It was the fifth attempt at the title for New Jersey-born Walcott, and at age 37, he became the oldest fighter to win the title. Four years earlier, Walcott had become the oldest man to fight for the title when he lost a controversial split decision to popular champion Joe Louis, despite knocking the champ down twice. The two fought again in 1948; this time, Louis scored a KO. Louis retired soon after, and officials chose Walcott and Charles to fight for the vacant title, with Charles winning a decision. They'd fight again in March '51 with Charles again winning a decision before Walcott finally won the title four months later. He would successfully defend the belt once (again, fighting Charles) before Rocky Marciano knocked him out in September '52. After being knocked out by Marciano again six month later, Walcott retired from professional boxing; in 1994, 45-year old George Foreman eclipsed his "oldest champion ever" distinction.
On July 19, 1848, the first major event of the women's rights movement - the Seneca Falls Convention - begins, with about 200 women in attendance. It has its roots in the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, to which two American abolitionists - Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Caty Stanton (below) - are denied admission due to their lack of penises. They returned to the US and began organizing a meeting for women's rights in Stanton's home town of Seneca Falls, NY. The attendees of the two-day event adopted a Declaration of Sentiments and Grievances, along with 12 resolutions, including the demand for a woman's right to vote. On July 19, 1843, the SS Great Britain is launched in Bristol, England. At 322 feet and more than 3,600 tons, she is the largest vessel in the world at the time, and from a distance, she appears to be a conventional sailing vessel. In fact, she had an iron hull and a steam engine with a screw propeller, both firsts for an ocean-going vessel. She was in service as a passenger ship, first on the trans-Atlantic run, then on the Australian route, and finally the Falkland Islands, for most of the next 98 years. In 1970 the Great Britain was raised from where she had been scuttled near the Falklands and restored. She is now moored in Bristol as a museum ship and is listed with Great Britain's National Historic Fleet. Shortly after midnight on July 19, 1977, the Rockwell Collins Company of Cedar Rapids receives the first Global Positioning System signal. The concept for GPS was born in 1957 when scientists at MIT tracking Sputnik noticed the tiny Russian satellite's signal changed depending on its distance from the receiver. If a satellite's position could be computed by the frequency of the signal, they reasoned, then an object on the ground could be tracked by a satellite. Two years later, the Navy was keeping track of its own submarines via a network of 6 satellites. In the mid-60's the aerospace industry began developing dedicated GPS satellites. There are several GPS systems operating today, though the US system offers the most complete coverage of the globe (with 31 operational satellites; a minimum of 24 are required for full network coverage), and is freely available to anyone with the proper receiver. (a museum model of a Block II-A GPS satellite)
Happy 3rd anniversary, thread! On July 20, 1923, Mexican revolutionary "Pancho" Villa is killed in an ambush. He was 45 years old. The son of a Chihuahua sharecropper, Jose Arambula was forced into the military at age 16 after killing a man who had raped his sister, but he deserted (killing an officer in the process) and assumed the name Francisco Villa to avoid detection. He was leading a criminal gang when revolution broke out in 1910, and was offered a colonel's commission in the revolutionary army. Villa demonstrated a natural talent for battle strategy, while at the same time earning a Robin Hood-like reputation among the poor. He also led numerous raids into the US southwest, but successfully avoided capture by both the Mexican and American armies until the Mexican government negotiated peace with Villa. His death 3 years later officially remains an unsolved crime. On July 20, 1900, the LZ 1, the first rigid airship, makes its first flight in southern Germany. General Ferdinand von Zeppelin had his first ride in a balloon in the US while serving as an observer for the Union army during the Civil War. On his return to Germany he began developing his ideas for a gas-filled, rigid airship, retiring from the army in 1891 to devote his full time to the project. The LZ 1 was 400 feet long and 38 feet in diameter, and had an aluminum frame covered with a cotton skin. It flew for 17 minutes over Lake Constance on its maiden flight, reaching an altitude of more than 1,300 feet. Zeppelin would soon found Luftschippbau Zeppelin (Zeppelin Airship Company). Germany would lead the way in the use of Zeppelins (as rigid airships would quickly come to be known) for both commercial and military applications over the next 30 years, but the airship era would come to a sudden halt in 1937 with the tragic loss of LZ 129, the Hindenburg. On July 20, 1963, "Surf City" by Jan and Dean hits number 1 on the Billboard pop singles chart. High school pals Jan Berry and Dean Torrence had a couple of minor hits in their teens as doo-wop singers, including "Baby Talk" (1961), which Beach Boys co-founder Mike Love credits with inspiring his band. In early 1963, Jan and Dean appeared on a Los Angeles billing with the Beach Boys and developed a friendship with Brian Wilson. Asking Wilson for permission to record one of his songs, Wilson gave them an unpublished instrumental track and even suggested a lyrical hook - "Two girls for every boy." From that, Jan and Dean created "Surf City", which ironically reached number one before anything the Beach Boys ever recorded. Coming in the same summer as Beach Party, the first Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello movie, "Surf City" was a major influence in the California beach life-craze of the mid 60's. It was also their only number 1 song, their partnership derailed in April 1966 by Berry's near-fatal car accident.
On July 21, 1873 near Adair, Iowa, the James-Younger gang pulls off the first train robbery west of the Mississippi. The gang had its origins in the Missouri Territory Confederate bushwhackers (guerilla fighters) of the Civil War, and consisted of the infamous James brothers (Jesse and Frank), the four Younger brothers and nine others. With the Adair train robbery, they derailed a Rock Island Railroad train, killing the engineer, and made off with about $2,300 from the express safe. From 1866-81 the gang murdered an unknown number of victims and robbed their way up and down the Mississippi River states, from Minnesota to Louisiana (in 1874 they robbed a stagecoach in north Louisiana a stone's throw from where Bonnie and Clyde would be ambushed 60 years later). (below: Jesse and Frank James) On July 21, 365 AD, a pair of sub-sea earthquakes off the island of Crete trigger a tsunami that devastates much of the north African coast, including Alexandria, Egypt. An estimated 5,000 were killed in the port city, many by their own greed. Historians record that ships in the Alexandria harbor were left high and dry as the water quickly receded in the buildup to the approaching tsunami. People rushing to pilfer the grounded ships were killed when the water rushed back in, throwing the ships against (in many cases, over) the city's seawall. As many as 45,000 more were killed in the surrounding countryside by the flood, and the seawater damaged farming in the region for several years. In 1995, archaeologists discovered an entire portion of ancient Alexandria that was lost to the Mediterranean as a result of the tsunami. On July 21, 2007, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final novel in British author J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, is released worldwide. In the US and UK alone, roughly 11 million copies are sold in the first 24 hours, a Guiness World Record. The novel chronicles the final battle between Harry, a teenage wizard-in-training, and Lord Voldemort, the evil wizard who killed Harry's parents. Together, the 7 Harry Potter novels have sold 400 million copies in 60 languages worldwide. The series is credited with boosting childhood literacy around the globe.
On July 22, 1342, days of heavy rain cause 9 major central European rivers (including the Rhine, the Moselle, the Danube and the Elbe) and their tributaries to rise, triggering the St. Mary Magdalene flood. Named for the religious feast day celebrated on that date, it is the worst flood of central Europe in recorded history. There is no way to calculate the loss of life, but estimates suggest 6,000 perished as a result of the Danube flooding alone. Geologists estimate the erosion caused by the flooding was the equivalent of 2,000 years worth of erosion under normal climate conditions. The flooding damaged agriculture to the point of causing years of famine; some historians argue the resulting health issues from loss of nutrition contributed to the Black Death a decade later. (the base of a footbridge in Frankfurt, Germany has plaques showing the high water marks of floods through the centuries. The highest plaque denotes the 1342 flood) On July 22, 1923, a 20-year old man enters the Navy recruiting station in Indianapolis, IN to enlist. Whether or not the man's background was checked (it would have shown a history of petty thefts and one auto theft) is unknown; the recruit was accepted and assigned as a machinery repairman with the rank of Petty Officer 3rd Class (equal to an Army or Marine corporal). Less than six months later, he was dishonorably discharged after multiple AWOL attempts, and soon fell back into a life of crime. On July 22, 1934, 11 years to the day of his enlistment in the Navy, John Dillinger was shot and killed by FBI agents in Chicago. On July 22, 1893, a group of teachers from Colorado College in Colorado Springs decide to take a wagon ride to the top of Pike's Peak. They include an English teacher, amateur poet and social activist named Katharine Lee Bates, who was inspired by the view from the top to write a poem called "America the Beautiful." It was published by The Congregationalist two years later in celebration of Independence Day and gained immediate popularity. It also inspired at least 75 composers to try to put the poem to music. But it was a melodic hymn written in 1882 by Newark, NJ Episcopal choir director Samuel Ward that would bring "America the Beautiful" to its acceptance as one of America's most beloved patriotic songs. The joining of words and music came in 1910, and no one knows who put them together; Ward had died in 1903. Bates died in 1929, and though she did not write "America the Beautiful" as a song (nor did she ever write any other song), she was inducted into the American Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...male_vocalist)_-_United_States_Navy_Band.opus
On July 24, 1866, the State of Tennessee is readmitted to the Union. President Lincoln and Congress had begun to mull the process of readmission even before the end of the Civil War, but could not agree on a process before Lincoln's assassination. His successor, Andrew Johnson, proposed a plan that Congress (as with Lincoln) found too lenient. Johnson wanted the Confederate states to not only outlaw slavery in their state constitutions, but had to ratify the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery at the Federal level. Congress wanted one more provision; ratification of the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to former slaves. Tennessee ratified 14A on July 18, and the Republican Congress, in a jab at the Democrat Johnson, welcomed his home state back into the fold. It would be two more years before any other Confederate state was readmitted. On July 24, 1959, Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev debate politics in a model kitchen. Hoping to thaw Cold War tensions, the two superpowers had agreed to host a cultural exhibit from the other nation in the summer of '59. At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, Nixon was guiding Khrushchev on a personal tour when Nikita decided it was a good time to pitch a fit. He began sneering at the American technology on display, and as the tour entered a model of a "typical American kitchen," told Nixon, "The only thing you know about Communism is that you're afraid of it." As American reporters took furious notes, the two world leaders loudly argued the pros and cons of capitalism vs communism. Nixon would later regret that he had "not been a very good host." In hindsight, neither participant won the "Kitchen Debate," but the media had fun with it. (Khrushchev is the large bald man in center, facing Nixon in dark suit) On July 24, 1950, an RTV-G-4 Bumper rocket (an 8-launch program meant to identify problems with two-stage rockets) is launched from Patrick Air Force Base in Florida. It is the first rocket launch from Florida's Cape Canaveral. Previous launches had taken place at the White Sands range in New Mexico. Space program planners knew the east coast was the best spot for orbital launches, the Atlantic Ocean being the safe zone in the event of a catastrophic failure at launch. Further, Florida was the best spot on the east coast because it was closest to the equator, where the faster speed of the Earth's rotation would provide an additional boost at launch. Cape Canaveral (the name was changed to Cape Kennedy by EO following JFK's death in 1963, but changed back to Cape Canaveral by the state legislature in 1974) has been the site of more than 400 space launches, including every manned American launch. Vandenberg Air Force Base, however, beats out Cape Canaveral as the most prolific launch site, with more than 700 satellite and probe launches.
On July 25, 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the world's first baby conceived through in vitro fertilization, is born in Manchester, England. Lesley Brown was infertile due to blocked fallopian tubes. Her pregnancy was made possible through a decade of research by British physiologist Robert Edwards and OB/GYN Patrick Steptoe. They took an egg from Lesley and sperm from her husband Peter and successfully combined them into an embryo, which was then inserted into Lesley's uterus. Louise was delivered via c-section and weighed 5 and a half pounds at birth. Detractors questioned the morality of the scientifically induced pregnancy and derided Louise as a "test tube baby"; the Nobel Committee would eventually award Edwards the Nobel Prize for Medicine. In vitro fertilization is now a mainstream treatment for infertility. On July 25, 1944, Allied forces in Normandy launch Operation Cobra. The Allied advance into France had moved slowly for nearly two months after gaining a beachhead on D-Day. Seeking to quicken the pace, General Omar Bradley's staff developed Cobra. British and Canadian forces in northern France launched attacks in the region of Caen. When the Germans redeployed to counter the threat, the U.S. First Army attacked in Normandy with massive aerial support. Within a week, the German defenses in Normandy and Brittany had crumbled, and Bradley launched the next phase of the attack, an aggressive move to the south by the newly-created 3rd Army under General George S. Patton. By August 8, 3rd Army was fully mobile and the war in Normandy became one of rapid maneuver. On July 25, 1975, A Chorus Line opens on Broadway. Eighteen months earlier, career Broadway dancers Michon Peacock and Tony Stevens conducted a series of taped interviews with other dancers ("gypsies" in theater jargon), getting stories about their lives and what attracted them to dancing. From those tapes, Peacock, Stevens and director Michael Bennett developed A Chorus Line, which fancifully depicts the auditions for a fictional musical in real time. Eight of the gypsies who took part in the interviews were included in the cast and told their own stories, making the show partially autobiographical. At a time when interest in live theater was declining, some theater historians feel A Chorus Line literally saved Broadway: it would be the first musical to break the 4,000, 5,000 and 6,000 performance marks on the way to becoming the longest-running show of all time (now 7th). It won 9 Tony Awards (plus a tenth Special Tony when it broke the longest-running show record in 1984), the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 5 Drama Desk Awards, the Olivier Award (London) for Best Musical and its soundtrack album went Gold. There is talk of a 50th anniversary revival for 2025. (clip is from a 2006 revival)
