July 13
1923: A sign made of 50-foot-tall wooden letters spelling out “HOLLYWOODLAND” was dedicated in the Hollywood Hills to promote a subdivision. The final four letters were taken down in 1949.
1977: A 24-hour electrical blackout in New York City caused $1 billion in damage or lost revenue.
2012: China’s economic growth drops to 7.6%, its lowest level for three years.
July 14
1853: The first major U.S. world’s fair, the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, opened in New York City.
1865: The Matterhorn was ascended for the first time by Edward Whymper and party, four of whom died on the descent.
2009: Singapore experiences a seasonally adjusted and annualized growth of 20.4% in the second quarter as a result of increased pharmaceuticals production and construction, bringing the country out of the recession.
July 15
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.
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.
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.
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.
1955: Disneyland opened on 55 acres in Anaheim, Calif.
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
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: 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.
1848: Bloomers were introduced for the first time at the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y.
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.
ON THIS DAY… JULY 13 – JULY 19
July 13- NATIONAL FRENCH FRY DAY
Did you know that the origin of French fries is more than likely not French at all? Potatoes were being fried in Belgium way before the French.
July 14- NATIONAL TAPE MEASURE DAY
Whether you need a tape measure for your job as a seamstress or construction worker, you’ll need a tape measure.
July 15- NATIONAL GUMMY WORM DAY
The name “gummi” is the German word for “rubber”, so you can get a satisfying stretch out of the squiggly candy before you pop it in your mouth or just bite its head off.
July 16- WORLD SNAKE DAY
This day aims to increase awareness regarding the over 3,500 snake species that exist across the world.
July 17- NATIONAL TATTOO DAY
Tattooing is the art of inserting pigment under the dermis layer of the skin to create a decorative, symbolic, or pictorial design.
July 18- GLOBAL HUG YOUR KIDS DAY A natural expression of love and a stress reliever, don’t forget to wrap your kids in a bear hug today.
July 19 -STICK OUT YOUR TONGUE DAY While many cultures find it rude and childish, did you know that the gesture of sticking our your tongue is seen as a polite greeting in Tibet?