July 18
1925: Adolf Hitler published his personal manifesto, Mein Kampf.
1968: The Intel Corporation was founded in Santa Clara, Calif.
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.
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.
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.
1943: More than 500 Allied aircraft bombed Rome, Italy, inflicting thousands of casualties.
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.
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.
1944: Adolf Hitler survived an assassination attempt led by German Army Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who was executed the next day, along with many fellow conspirators.
1960: The Polaris missile was successfully launched from a submerged submarine, the USS George Washington, for the first time.
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.
July 21
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.
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.
July 22
1793: Alexander Mackenzie reached the Pacific Ocean to become the first recorded human to complete a transcontinental crossing of Canada.
1923: Born this day: U.S. presidential candidate, Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., and wrestler The Fabulous Moolah (died 2007).
1934: Outlaw hero John Dillinger was gunned down by FBI agents in front of Chicago’s Biograph Cinema.
1941: Born this day: singer Estelle Bennett (The Ronettes, died 2009); musician George Clinton (composer of sound track from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery); and illustrator Vaughn Bodē, (Cheech Wizard, died 1975).
1942: The U.S. government ordered gasoline rationing for civilians to support the war effort.
1943: Born this day: U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and singer Bobby Sherman (“Julie Do Ya Love Me”).
1947: Born this day: actor Albert Brooks, and rock singer Don Henley.
1963: Born this day: actor Rob Estes, and folk singer Emily Saliers (Indigo Girls).
1964: Born this day: actors John Leguizamo and David Spade.
1991: Serial murderer/ cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested in Milwaukee after police discovered human remains in his apartment.
2003: Members of 101st Airborne of the United States, aided by Special Forces, attack a compound in Iraq and killed Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay, along with Mustapha Hussein, Qusay’s 14-year-old son, and a bodyguard.
July 23
1904: The ice cream cone was invented at the World’s Fair in St. Louis.
1926: Fox Film bought the patents of the Movietone sound system for recording sound onto film.
1962: Telstar relayed the first publicly transmitted, live trans-Atlantic television program, featuring Walter Cronkite.
1967: Race riots in Detroit killed 43 and injured 1,189, with 2,000 buildings burned.1982: Actor Vic Morrow and child-actor Myca Dinh Le (age 7) were decapitated, and child-actress Renee Shin-Yi Chen (age 6) was crushed, by a helicopter blade during filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie.
1984: Vanessa Williams became the first Miss America to resign when she surrendered her crown after nude photos of her appeared in Penthouse magazine.
2011: English singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse, 27, died in London of an overdose of drug-withdrawal medication, joining the 27 Club.
July 24
1847: Mormon leader Brigham Young peered out of his covered wagon across the broad, empty Salt Lake valley and declared, “This is the place,” thus ending a three-year journey by 148 Mormon pioneers into the West from Illinois.
1911: Hiram Bingham III re-discovered Machu Picchu, “the Lost City of the Incas.”
1935: The Dust Bowl heat wave reached its peak, sending temperatures to 109 degrees F in Chicago and 104 degrees F in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
1948: Marc Racicot, former Montana governor, former head of the Republican National Committee and one-time advisor to President George W. Bush, was born in Thompson Falls, Mont. His family moved to Libby, Mont., when he was age 4. He graduated from Libby High School in 1966.
1974: At the height of the Watergate scandal, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and ordered him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor. Deborah Gail Stone, 18, an employee at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, was crushed to death between a moving wall and a stationary wall inside the revolving America Sings attraction.