Events

• 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.
• 1855 – Signing of the Quinault Treaty: The Quinault and the Quileute cede their land to the United States.
• 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.
• 1873 – Prince Edward Island joins into Canadian Confederation.
• 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.
• 1898 – Spanish-American War: The Battle of San Juan Hill is fought in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba.
• 1908 – SOS is adopted as the international distress signal.
• 1911 – Germany despatches the gunship SMS Panther to Morocco, sparking the Agadir Crisis.
• 1915 – Leutnant Kurt Wintgens of the then-named German Deutsches Heer’s Fliegertruppe army air service achieves the first known aerial victory with a synchronized 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.
• 1917 – Chinese General Zhang Xun seizes control of Beijing and restores the monarchy, installing Puyi, last emperor of the Qing dynasty, to the throne.
  • The restoration is reversed just shy of two weeks later, when Republican troops regain control of the capital.
• 1921 – the Chinese Communist Party is founded by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, with the help of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks), who seized power in Russia after the 1917 October Revolution, and the Far Eastern Secretariat of the Communist International.
• 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.
• 1949 – The merger of two princely states of India, Cochin and Travancore, into the state of Thiru-Kochi (later re-organized as Kerala) in the Indian Union ends more than 1,000 years of princely rule by the Cochin royal family.
• 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.
• 1967 – Merger Treaty: The European Community is formally created out of a merger with the Common Market, the European Coal and Steel Community, and the European Atomic Energy Commission.
• 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 Heroes’ Day can fall, celebrated on the first Monday of July (Zambia).
• Earliest day on which Navy Day can fall, celebrated on the first Sunday of July (Ukraine).
• Earliest day on which Navy Days can fall, celebrated on the first Saturday and Sunday of July (Netherlands).
• Armed Forces Day (Singapore).
• Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Establishment Day (Hong Kong, China).
• Independence Day (Burundi), celebrates the independence of Burundi from Belgium in 1962.
• Independence Day (Rwanda).
• Independence Day (Somalia).

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).
• 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. 2020).
• 1946 – Erkki Tuomioja, Finnish sergeant and politician, Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs.
• 1951 – Klaus-Peter Justus, German runner.
• 1955 – Maʻafu Tukuiʻaulahi, Tongan politician and military officer, Deputy Prime Minister (d. 2021).
• 1960 – Lynn Jennings, American runner.
• 1961 – Malcolm Elliott, English cyclist.
• 1961 – Carl Lewis, American long jumper and runner.
• 1974 – Jefferson Pérez, Ecuadorian race walker.
• 1979 – Forrest Griffin, American mixed martial artist and actor.
• 1987 – Michael Schrader, German decathlete.
• 2000 – Lalu Muhammad Zohri, Indonesian sprinter.

People (Deaths)

• 1224 – Hōjō Yoshitoki, regent of the Kamakura shogunate of Japan (b. 1163).
• 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).
• 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).