On this date...
In 1651, Anthony Johnson, a free African American, receives a grant of 250 acres in Virginia.
In 1758, George Washington is elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, representing Frederick County.
In 1776, Congressional President John Hancock scolds Major General Philip Schuyler. In a letter, Hancock accuses the officer of tolerating discord among soldiers from different states under his command. Disappointed, Hancock told Schuyler that Congress was “concerned to find there should be a necessity of recommending harmony to the officers and troops of different States under your command” can show greater weakness or wickedness than to throw provincial reflections on one another, which must have direct tendency to impede public service, and weaken the union of the American States.
1776, Washington writes to his stepson John Parke Custis, offering advice about a land exchange, but the war presses into the letter. General William Howe has landed his army, he reports. Washington expects him to wait for reinforcements, but when they arrive, he predicts “some pretty warm Work.”
In 1776, in today’s orders, Washington urges hunting shirts and long breeches: cheap, practical, and seasonable. They also frighten British soldiers, who imagine every hunting-shirted man a deadly marksman.
On July 24, 1779, a naval expeditionary force commissioned by the Massachusetts General Assembly departs Boothbay, Maine, headed for the Penobscot peninsula, where British forces had recently established a small fort and trading post. The attack, and subsequent three-week-long siege, would end disastrously for the Americans with one of the worst naval defeats in the country’s history.
In 1799, William Clark is willed the enslaved man York, who goes on to accompany him and play an important role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
In 1824, a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania newspaper publishes results of the first public opinion poll, showing a clear lead for Andrew Jackson.
In 1832, Benjamin Bonneville leads the first wagon train across the Rocky Mountains through Wyoming’s South Pass.
In 1847, Brigham Young and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah.
In 1866, Tennessee became the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War.
In 1880, the first commercial hydroelectric power plant in the world began generating electricity in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
In 1901, William Sydney Porter, otherwise known as O. Henry, was released from prison on this day after serving three years in jail for embezzlement from a bank in Austin, Texas.
In 1915, in one of the worst maritime disasters in American history, the passenger liner SS Eastland capsized in the Chicago River, killing more than 840 people.
In 1929, US President Herbert Hoover proclaimed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war.
In 1933, Keystone Camp, a girls’ camp in Brevard, North Carolina, begins its first “Christmas in July” celebration. The tradition will spread throughout the US, although sometimes observed on different days.
In 1937, the state of Alabama dropped charges against five black men accused of raping two white women in the Scottsboro case.
In 1941, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt freezes Japanese assets and demands that Japan withdraw its forces from French Indochina.
In 1945, WWII: A suicide attack by a Japanese Kaiten manned torpedo sinks the US Navy destroyer USS Underhill west of Guam; nearly half of the 236 crew members are killed.
In 1945, Selma Burke’s bronze relief portrait of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was first shown in public. The image of Roosevelt on the U.S. dime that was released in 1946 resembles her sculpture, though the U.S. Mint denied that it had any influence.
In 1945, through an interpreter, President Harry S. Truman hinted to Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin that the United States had successfully developed a new weapon. In his diary, Truman privately referred to the new weapon, the atomic bomb, as the most terrible bomb in the history of the world.
In 1956, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis staged their final show as a comedy team at the Copacabana Club in New York City; the performance ended in the early hours of July 25, exactly ten years after their first gig together in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
In 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and U.S. Vice President Richard M. Nixon engaged in the “kitchen debate” at an American exhibition in Moscow.
In 1969, Apollo 11 splashed safely in the Pacific.
In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon had to turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor.
In 1975, an Apollo spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific, completing a mission which included the first docking with a Soyuz capsule from the Soviet Union.
In 1979, a Miami jury convicted Ted Bundy of first-degree murder in the slayings of two Florida State University sorority sisters.
In 1979, US President Jimmy Carter named Paul Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
In 1983, Pine Tar Incident: Umpires disallow Kansas City Royals star George Brett’s home run against the NY Yankees for excessive pine tar on his bat. The American League later overturns the ruling and restores the home run.
In 1992, Commissioner Fay Vincent reinstates NY Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, effective March 1, 1993, ending his suspension from day-to-day club operations over his dealings with gambler Howard Spira.
In 1998, Russell Eugene Weston Jr. bursts into the United States Capitol and opens fire, killing two police officers. He is later ruled to be incompetent to stand trial.
In 2002, the U.S. House expelled Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, who had been convicted of bribery, racketeering and tax evasion.
In 2005, American cyclist Lance Armstrong became the first rider to win the Tour de France seven times; however, he was later stripped of all his titles after an investigation revealed that he was the key figure in a wide-ranging doping conspiracy.
In 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller reported to the US Senate that President Trump was not exonerated of obstruction of justice and that Russia interfered in the US election to benefit Trump.
In 2023, Elon Musk rebranded the social media site Twitter as X after merging Twitter with his company X Holdings.
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