July 15
1838: Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered the Divinity School Address at Harvard Divinity School, discounting Bible miracles and declaring Jesus a great man, but not God. The Protestant community reacted with predictable outrage.
1870: Georgia became the last of the former Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.
1910: In his book Clinical Psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin gave a name to Alzheimer’s disease, naming it after his colleague, Alois Alzheimer.
1916: William Boeing and George Conrad Westervelt incorporated Pacific Aero Products (later renamed Boeing) in Seattle.
1922: The duck-billed platypus was displayed publicly for the first time.
2006: Twitter was launched; it would become one of the largest social media platforms in the world.
2018: 8 year old girl finds pre-Viking-era sword in Vidostern lake, Sweden, internet proclaims her queen of Sweden.
2019: Tampa Bay catcher Travis d’Arnaud becomes first player in MLB history to hit 3 homers while catching and batting leadoff in the Rays’ 5-4 win over the NY Yankees
July 16
1769: Father Junípero Serra founded California’s first mission, Mission San Diego de Alcalá. (It evolved into the city of San Diego.)
1790: Washington DC became the nation’s capital.
1862: David Farragut was promoted to rear admiral, becoming the first officer in U.S. Navy to hold the rank of admiral.
1907: Born this day: Popcorn mogul Orville Redenbacher (died 1995), and actress Barbara Stanwyck (The Big Valley, died 1990)
1911: Born this day: actress/dancer Ginger Rogers (died 1995) and actor Sonny Tufts (The Seven-Year Itch, died 1970).
1935: The world’s first parking meter was installed in Oklahoma City, Okla.
1945: The Atomic Age began when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon near Alamogordo, New Mexico.
1948: The first hijacking of a commercial airplane occurred when five men stormed the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane over the China Sea, for robbery and ransom.
1951: The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger was published for the first time by Little, Brown and Company.
1956: Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus held its last “Big Tent” show in Pittsburgh, Pa. (All subsequent circus shows would be held in arenas.)
1969: Apollo 11, the first mission to land astronauts on the Moon, was launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Kennedy, Fla. Born this day: TV actors Daryl Mitchell (The John Larroquette Show) and Rain Pryor (Head of the Class).
1973: During the Senate Watergate hearings, former White House aide Alexander P. Butterfield publicly revealed the existence of President Nixon’s secret Oval Office taping system.
1981: Singer Harry Chapin (“Cat’s In The Cradle”) was killed when his car was struck by a tractor-trailer on New York’s Long Island Expressway.
1999: John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn and her sister, Lauren Bessette, died when their single-engine plane plunged into the ocean near Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.
2017: BBC announces first ever female Doctor Who will be played by Jodie Whittaker.
2018: 12 new moons discovered orbiting Jupiter bringing planet’s moon total to 79, by scientists at Carnegie Institution for Science.
July 17
1867: Harvard School of Dental Medicine was established in Boston. It was the first U.S. dental school affiliated with a university.
1902: Willis Haviland Carrier began operating the first air conditioning system—which he invented, designed and built—at a printing company in Brooklyn, N.Y.
1938: Douglas Corrigan took off from Brooklyn and flew the “wrong way” to Ireland, to become known as “Wrong Way” Corrigan.
1945: The victorious Allies (United States, Britain and France) met in Potsdam, Germany, and abolished Nazism and Nazi organizations.
1955: Disneyland opened on 55 acres in Anaheim, Calif.
1962: Major Robert Michael White flew the X-15 rocket jet to an altitude of 314,750 feet (59 miles, 96 km). This qualified him for an Astronaut Badge, becoming the first “Winged Astronaut,” one of few who have flown into space without a conventional spacecraft.
2018: Oldest evidence of bread, made from wild grains, discovered by archaeologists in 14,000 year-old dig in the Black Desert, Jordon.
2019: Streaming service Netflix reaches 150 million subscribers worldwide, but with slower growth than forecast.
July 18
1925: Adolf Hitler published his personal manifesto, Mein Kampf.
1968: The Intel Corporation was founded in Santa Clara, Calif.
1969: After a party on Chappaquiddick Island, U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., (1932-2009) drove an Oldsmobile off a bridge and left the scene of the accident. His passenger and mistress, Mary Jo Kopechne, died at the scene.
1976: Nadia Comăneci became the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Quebec.
1995: On the Caribbean island of Montserrat, the Soufriere Hills volcano began erupting. (Over the course of several years it devastated the island, destroyed the capital and forced most of the population to flee.)
2013: The government of Detroit, with up to $20 billion in debt, filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.
2013: Detroit, Michigan, files for bankruptcy, becoming the largest US municipal bankruptcy ever at $18.5 billion.
2019: June 2019 was the hottest June on record with average worldwide temperature of 61.6F (16.4C) according to The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
July 19
A.D. 64: The city of Rome was almost entirely destroyed by a fire of unknown origin.
1701: Representatives of the Iroquois Confederacy signed the Nanfan Treaty, which ceded a large territory north of the Ohio River to England.
1848: Bloomers were introduced for the first time at the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y.
1903: Maurice Garin won the first Tour de France.
1942: Germany withdrew its U-boats from the Atlantic coast of the United States in response to the effective American convoy system.
1947: Born this day: musicians Bernie Leadon (The Eagles, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band), and Brian May (Queen).
1952: The 15th Summer Olympics opened in Helsinki, Finland.
1983: The first three-dimensional reconstruction of a human head in a CT scan was published.
2018: Russian ship Dmitri Donskoii, with possible cargo of gold coins is discovered in waters between South Korea and Japan where it sunk in 1905.
2019: Largest wind farm in Africa opens at Lake Turkana, Kenya, generating 310 megawatts.
July 20
1807: The first internal combustion engine was patented in France.
1851: At the Benicia Army station near San Francisco, Calif., troops on the marching ground were rained on by a shower of blood and chunks of beef. No explanation for the event has ever been found.
1871: British Columbia joined the confederation of Canada.
1903: Ford Motor Co. shipped its first car.
1938: The U.S. Justice Department filed suit in New York City against the motion picture industry, charging violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act in regards to the studio system. (The case would eventually result in a break-up of the industry in 1948.) Born this day: actresses Diana Rigg and Natalie Wood (died 1981).
1940: California opened its first freeway, the Arroyo Seco Parkway, connecting Los Angeles with Pasadena.
1945: Born this day: singer Kim Carnes; U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho; special effects artist Harrison Ellenshaw (Star Wars); musician John Lodge (Moody Blues).
1960: The Polaris missile was successfully launched from a submerged submarine, the USS George Washington, for the first time.
1968: The first International Special Olympics Summer Games were held at Soldier Field in Chicago, for about 1,000 athletes with intellectual disabilities. Conductor Joseph Keilberth, 60, died at the National Theatre in Munich, Germany, while leading Tristan and Isolde.
1969: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon. Upon placing his foot on the lunar surface, Armstrong declared: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
1977: The Central Intelligence Agency released documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind-control experiments with project MKULTRA.
1990: Violinist Erich Gruenberg’s Stradivarius violin was stolen as he was loading his luggage into a friend’s car at Los Angeles International Airport. (It was recovered in April 1999 in Honduras.)
2006: 39th San Diego Comic-Con International opens at San Diego Convention Center.
2017: China announces a plan against “foreign garbage” banning 24 categories of plastic and recyclable waste from 2018.
July 21
1796: Poet Robert Burns (“Auld Lang Syne”) died in Scotland at age 37.
1865: Wild Bill Hickok shot and killed Davis Tutt in the market square in Springfield, Mo., in what is regarded as the first Old West showdown.
1873: The Jesse James gang pulled off the first successful train robbery in the Old West.
1899: Born this day: author Ernest Hemingway (died 1961), and poet Hart Crane (died 1932).
1918: German submarine U-156 shelled Nauset Beach in Orleans, Mass.
1922: Born this day: Pop, jazz, and country singer Kay Starr; and English actress Mollie Sugden (Are You Being Served?, died 2009)
1925: High school biology teacher John T. Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution in class in Dayton, Tenn., and fined $100.
1983: The earth’s lowest surface temperature of an inhabited location, minus 129 degrees Fahrenheit, was recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica.
2007: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the fastest-selling novel ever, was published. It sold 15 million copies in the first 24 hours of its release.
2011: NASA’s Space Shuttle program ended with the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-135. This became the first time since 1961 that the United States had no means to launch astronauts into space.
2015: On This Day changes its domain name and brand from HistoryOrb.com to OnThisDay.com.
2018: Re-boot of TV show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” announced with creator Joss Whedon as executive producer.