Events

• AD 69 – Tiberius Julius Alexander orders his Roman legions in Alexandria to swear allegiance to Vespasian as Emperor.
• 552 – Battle of Taginae: Byzantine forces under Narses defeat the Ostrogoths in Italy, and the Ostrogoth king, Totila, is mortally wounded.
• 1097 – Battle of Dorylaeum: Crusaders led by prince Bohemond of Taranto defeat a Seljuk army led by sultan Kilij Arslan I.
• 1431 – The Battle of La Higueruela takes place in Granada, leading to a modest advance of the Kingdom of Castile during the Reconquista.
• 1520 – Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés fight their way out of Tenochtitlan after nightfall.
• 1569 – Union of Lublin: The Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania confirm a real union; the united country is called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or the Republic of Both Nations.
• 1690 – Glorious Revolution: Battle of the Boyne in Ireland (as reckoned under the Julian calendar).
• 1782 – Raid on Lunenburg: American privateers attack the British settlement of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.
• 1837 – A system of civil registration of births, marriages and deaths is established in England and Wales.
• 1855 – Signing of the Quinault Treaty: The Quinault and the Quileute cede their land to the United States.
• 1858 – Joint reading of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace’s papers on evolution to the Linnean Society of London.
• 1862 – American Civil War: The Battle of Malvern Hill takes place. It is the last of the Seven Days Battles, part of George B. McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign.
• 1863 – American Civil War: The Battle of Gettysburg begins.
• 1867 – The British North America Act takes effect as the Province of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia join into confederation to create the modern nation of Canada.
  • Sir John A. Macdonald is sworn in as the first Prime Minister of Canada.
  • This date is commemorated annually in Canada as Canada Day, a national holiday.
• 1874 – The Sholes and Glidden typewriter, the first commercially successful typewriter, goes on sale.
• 1881 – The world’s first international telephone call is made between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, and Calais, Maine, United States.
• 1881 – General Order 70, the culmination of the Cardwell and Childers reforms of the British Army, comes into effect.
• 1885 – The Congo Free State is established by King Leopold II of Belgium.
• 1890 – Canada and Bermuda are linked by telegraph cable.
• 1898 – Spanish-American War: The Battle of San Juan Hill is fought in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba.
• 1903 – Start of first Tour de France bicycle race.
• 1908 – SOS is adopted as the international distress signal.
• 1911 – Germany despatches the gunship SMS Panther to Morocco, sparking the Agadir Crisis.
• 1915 – World War I: Leutnant Kurt Wintgens of the then-named German Deutsches Heer’s Fliegertruppe army air service achieves the first known aerial victory with a synchronised machine-gun armed fighter plane, the Fokker M.5K/MG Eindecker.
• 1916 – World War I: First day on the Somme: On the first day of the Battle of the Somme 19,000 soldiers of the British Army are killed and 40,000 wounded.
• 1942 – World War II: First Battle of El Alamein.
• 1946 – Crossroads Able is the first post-war nuclear weapon test.
• 1947 – The Philippine Air Force is established.
• 1959 – Specific values for the international yard, avoirdupois pound and derived units (e.g. inch, mile and ounce) are adopted after agreement between the US, the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries.
• 1960 – The Trust Territory of Somaliland (the former Italian Somaliland) gains its independence from Italy.
  • Concurrently, it unites as scheduled with the five-day-old State of Somaliland (the former British Somaliland) to form the Somali Republic.
• 1960 – Ghana becomes a republic and Kwame Nkrumah becomes its first President as Queen Elizabeth II ceases to be its head of state.
• 1962 – Independence of Rwanda and Burundi.
• 1968 – The United States Central Intelligence Agency’s Phoenix Programme is officially established.
• 1968 – The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is signed in Washington, D.C., London and Moscow by sixty-two countries.
• 1976 – Portugal grants autonomy to Madeira.
• 1979 – Sony introduces the Walkman.
• 1990 – German reunification: East Germany accepts the Deutsche Mark as its currency, thus uniting the economies of East and West Germany.
• 1991 – Cold War: The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague.
• 1997 – China resumes sovereignty over the city-state of Hong Kong, ending 156 years of British colonial rule.
  • The handover ceremony is attended by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Charles, Prince of Wales, Chinese President Jiang Zemin, and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
• 1999 – The Scottish Parliament is officially opened by Elizabeth II on the day that legislative powers are officially transferred from the old Scottish Office in London to the new devolved Scottish Executive in Edinburgh.
  • In Wales, the powers of the Welsh Secretary are transferred to the National Assembly.
• 2002 – The International Criminal Court is established to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.
• Earliest day on which Navy Day can fall, celebrated on the first Sunday in July (Ukraine).
• Earliest day on which Navy Days can fall, celebrated First Saturday and Sunday (Netherlands).
• Armed Forces Day (Singapore).

People (Births)

• 1311 – Liu Bowen, Chinese military strategist, statesman and poet (d. 1375).
• 1725 – Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, French general (d. 1807).
• 1731 – Adam Duncan, 1st Viscount Duncan, Scottish-English admiral (d. 1804).
• 1863 – William Grant Stairs, Canadian-English captain and explorer (d. 1892).
• 1883 – Arthur Borton, English colonel, Victoria Cross recipient (d. 1933).
• 1909 – Emmett Toppino, American sprinter (d. 1971).
• 1910 – Glenn Hardin, American hurdler (d. 1975).
• 1911 – Sergey Sokolov, Russian marshal and politician, Soviet Minister of Defence (d. 2012).
• 1914 – Thomas Pearson, British Army officer (d. 2019).
• 1915 – Joseph Ransohoff, American soldier and neurosurgeon (d. 2001).
• 1916 – Robert Stanford Tuck, British fighter pilot and flying ace (d. 1987).
• 1917 – Humphry Osmond, English-American lieutenant and psychiatrist (d. 2004).
• 1919 – Arnold Meri, Estonian colonel (d. 2009).
• 1919 – Gerald E. Miller, American vice admiral (d. 2014).
• 1923 – Scotty Bowers, American marine, author and pimp (d. 2019).
• 1926 – Mohamed Abshir Muse, Somali general (d. 2017).
• 1942 – Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Iraqi field marshal and politician (d. 2015).
• 1951 – Klaus-Peter Justus, German runner.
• 1960 – Lynn Jennings, American runner.
• 1961 – Malcolm Elliott, English cyclist.
• 1961 – Carl Lewis, American long jumper and runner.
• 1974 – Jefferson Pérez, Ecuadorian race walker.
• 1987 – Michael Schrader, German decathlete.
• 2000 – Lalu Muhammad Zohri, Indonesian sprinter.

People (Deaths)

• 1782 – Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, English admiral and politician, Prime Minister of Great Britain (b. 1730).
• 1787 – Charles de Rohan, French marshal (b. 1715).
• 1863 – John F. Reynolds, American general (b. 1820).
• 1934 – Ernst Röhm, German paramilitary commander (b. 1887).
• 1943 – Willem Arondeus, Dutch artist, author, and anti-Nazi resistance fighter (b. 1894).
• 1966 – Frank Verner, American runner (b. 1883).
• 1974 – Juan Perón, Argentinian general and politician, President of Argentina (b. 1895).
• 1978 – Kurt Student, German general and pilot (b. 1890).
• 2009 – Onni Palaste, Finnish soldier and author (b. 1917).
• 2012 – Alan G. Poindexter, American captain, pilot, and astronaut (b. 1961).
• 2013 – Sidney Bryan Berry, American general (b. 1926).
• 2014 – Anatoly Kornukov, Ukrainian-Russian general (b. 1942).
• 2015 – Nicholas Winton, English lieutenant and humanitarian (b. 1909).