1541 – Estevão da Gama departs Massawa, leaving behind 400 matchlock men and 150 slaves under his brother Christovão da Gama, with orders to help the Emperor of Ethiopia defeat Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi who has invaded his Empire
1572 – Death of the Gorcum Martyrs: Calvinist militant force the Watergeuzen (the Sea Beggars) capture and hang 19 Catholic priests in Brielle
1672 – William III inaugurated as viceroy of Holland and Zealand
1810 – Napoleon annexes the Kingdom of Holland as part of the First French Empire
1932 – Yanks’ Ben Chapman hits 2 inside-the-park HRs, tying record
1947 – Engagement of Britain’s Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten
1985 – South Africa police arrested Dutch ANC’er Klaas de Jong
1986 – Padres trade pitcher Tim Stoddard to Yankees for pitcher Ed Whitson
2006 – At least 122 people killed after a Sibir Airlines Airbus A310 passenger jet, carrying 200 passengers veers off the runway while landing at Irkutsk Airport in Siberia in wet conditions
2016 – Wimbledon Women’s Tennis: Serena Williams beats Angelique Kerber 7-5, 6-3, equalling Steffi Graf’s 22 Grand Slam singles tiles
Category: Historical Events
Historical Events for 8th July 2023
1891 – 61°F, highest temperature for July 1891, in Baltimore and Philadelphia
1905 – Wimbledon Women’s Tennis: May Sutton becomes first American player to win the singles title at Wimbledon; beats Dorothea Chambers 6-3, 6-4
1912 – Wimbledon Men’s Tennis: Anthony Wilding makes it 3 straight Wimbledon singles crowns beating Arthur Gore 6-4, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4
1949 – Monte Irvin and Hank Thompson, 1st black players for New York Giants, 4-3 loss to Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field
1960 – Fidel Castro ends Havana’s International League team, Sugar Kings move to New Jersey
1961 – Wimbledon Women’s Tennis: In an all-British final Angela Mortimer wins her 3rd Grand Slam singles title; beats Christine Truman 4–6, 6–4, 7–5
1968 – Israeli-Egyptian artillery duel along Suez Canal
1969 – IBM CICS is made generally available for the 360 mainframe computer
1973 – NY Mets are 12½ games back in NL and go on to win pennant
1978 – Pioneer-Venus 2 Multi-probe launched to Venus
Historical Events for 7th July 2023
1438 – King Charles VII issues the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges stating that a General Church Council with superior power to the Pope must be held every 10 years
1585 – King Henri III and Duke De Guise signs Treaty of Nemours: French Huguenots lose all freedoms
1799 – Ranjit Singh’s men take up their positions outside Lahore
1801 – Toussaint Louverture declares Haitian independence
1868 – Surrey wicket-keeper Ted Pooley completes a then-1st class cricket record 12 dismissals (8 caught, 4 stumped) in a County match against Sussex at The Oval
1923 – University of Delaware invents “junior year abroad” (at Sorbonne)
1993 – Guntis Ulmanis elected president of Latvia
1996 – Space Shuttle STS 78 (Columbia 20), lands
2002 – Wimbledon Men’s Tennis: Lleyton Hewitt of Australia wins his only Wimbledon singles title beating David Nalbandian of Argentina 6-1, 6-3, 6-2
2019 – Copa América Final, Estádio do Maracanã, Rio de Janeiro: Home team Brazil win their 9th title, beating Peru, 3-1; first title since 2007
Historical Events for 6th July 2023
1641 – Battle at La Marfée Sedan: Earl Soisson beats French government army
1932 – Cubs’ future All Star shortstop Billy Jurges is shot twice in Chicago hotel room by a spurned girlfriend, Violet Popovich Valli; no charges laid
1933 – 1st MLB All Star Game: AL wins 4-2 at Comiskey Park, Chicago, Babe Ruth hits first All Star home run
1945 – Abbott and Costello’s film “The Naughty Nineties” released; features longest version of their “Who’s on First?” routine
1957 – Wimbledon Women’s Tennis: Althea Gibson becomes the first black female athlete to win Wimbledon beating Darlene Hard 6-3, 6-2
1969 – Frente Obrero y Liberacion (FOL) forms in Curacao
1977 – France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll
1984 – New Zealand sisters Liz and Rose Signal become the first twins to play in the same cricket Test match, v England at Headingley
2013 – 3 people are killed and 181 are injured after a Boeing 777 crash lands at San Francisco Airport
2020 – Zoonotic diseases, which jump from animals to humans, are increasing due to unsustainable farming and climate change according to new report by the UN
Historical Events for 5th July 2023
1750 – Slave revolt on Curacao
1841 – Thomas Cook opens first travel agency
1871 – Trial against Kiowa chief Satanta (White Bear) and Big Tree, begins
1937 – 117°F (47°C), Medicine Lake, Montana (state record)
1946 – British Open Men’s Golf, St Andrews: In first post-WWII Championship, Sam Snead wins his only Open title, 4 strokes clear of runners-up Johnny Bulla and Bobby Locke
1947 – “Barefoot Boy with Cheek” closes at Martin Beck NYC after 108 performances
1969 – Rolling Stones play a free concert in London’s Hyde Park
1981 – USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
1991 – American jockey Ray Sibille wins his 3,000th career race, aboard Sporting Surf at Pleasanton, California
2021 – One of world’s oldest pieces of art, 51,000-year-old deer bone carved by Neanderthals, announced discovered in Harz Mountains, Germany
Historical Events for 4th July 2023
1054 – Brightest known supernova SN 1054 (creates the Crab Nebula) 1st reported by Chinese astronomers
1610 – Battle of Klushino: King Sigismund III’s Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth army defeats Russia and Sweden
1754 – George Washington gives Fort Necessity to France
1879 – Africaner Union forms by Rev SJ du Toit at Cape colony
1892 – Western Samoa changes the International Date Line, so that year there were 367 days in this country, with two occurrences of Monday, July 4
1901 – William Howard Taft, former Federal judge, is installed as first governor-general of the Philippines and declares amnesty for all insurgents who take an oath of allegiance
1903 – Pacific Cable (San Francisco, Hawaii, Guam, Philippines) opens, President Theodore Roosevelt sends a message
1917 – Troops of the Russian Provisional Government open fire on protesters in Petrograd during the ‘July Days’ of unrest
1973 – Alan Ayckbourn’s “Absurd Person Singular,” premieres in London
2019 – Largest earthquake in California in 20 years 6.4 magnitude near Ridgecrest
Historical Events for 3rd July 2023
324 – Battle of Adrianople: Roman Emperor Constantine I defeats his co-emperor Licinius, who flees to Byzantium
1661 – Portugal gives Tangier and Bombay to English King Charles II
1861 – Colonel Jackson receives his commission as brigadier general
1884 – Dow Jones publishes its 1st stock index, the Dow Jones Transportation Average
1898 – American troops, en route to the Philippines on the SS China, raise the American flag on Wake Island
1936 – Wimbledon Men’s Tennis: Home favourite Fred Perry beats Gottfried von Cramm of Germany 6-1, 6-1, 6-0 for his third straight Wimbledon singles title
1944 – “Double Indemnity” film noir directed by Billy Wilder and starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck is released in Baltimore, Maryland
1962 – Algerian Revolution against French rule ends (Algeria gains independence on 5th July)
2018 – US Justice and Education Departments rescind Obama affirmative action policies in college admissions
2018 – Souad Abderrahim is elected the first female mayor of Tunis, Tunisia
Historical Events for 2nd July 2023
311 – St Miltiades begins his reign as Catholic Pope
1140 – Hartbert becomes bishop of Utrecht
1864 – General Early and Confederate forces reach Winchester en route to Washington, D.C.
1903 – Pitcher Jack Doscher, debuts for the Chicago Cubs, the first son of a major leaguer to play MLB, father Herm 1882-92
1921 – Warren G. Harding signs a joint congressional resolution declaring the official end of war with Germany
1950 – Cleveland Indians’ pitcher Bob Feller wins his 200th MLB game, 5-3 v Detroit Tigers
1956 – US performs nuclear test at Enwetak (atmospheric tests)
1966 – 1st France nuclear test on Mururoa atoll
1969 – Ireland cricketers dismiss West Indies for just 25 (Dougie Goodwin 5 for 6, Alec O’Riordan 4 for 18) to set up a huge upset in Londonderry
2017 – Women’s PGA Championship, Olympia Fields CC: American Danielle Kang scores her first professional win, 1 stroke ahead of defending champion Brooke Henderson of Canada
Historical Events for 1st July 2023
1863 – Slavery abolished in Dutch territories including Sint Maarten, Suriname and the Dutch Antilles, (now marked as Keti Koti Day in Suriname and the Netherlands)
1874 – 1st US kidnapping for ransom, 4-year-old Charles Ross, $20,000
1898 – Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders charge up San Juan Hill
1931 – Ice vending machines introduced in Los Angeles 25 lbs, 15 cents
1937 – Rev Martin Niemöller arrested in Nazi Germany for activities against the State
1947 – Basketball Association of America (BAA), which later became the National Basketball Association (NBA), holds its inaugural college player draft
1948 – NYC subway fare goes to 10 cents, bus fare to 7 cents and combo fare at 12 cents
1963 – ZIP (Zone Improvement Plan) Codes are introduced for United States mail
1980 – ‘O Canada’ officially becomes the national anthem of Canada.
1981 – Radio Shack 3rd release of Model III TRSDOS 1.3
Historical Events for 30th June 2023
1294 – Jews are expelled from Berne, Switzerland
1598 – King Philip II of Spain moves to El Escorial royal palace (dies there three months later)
1851 – Battle of Viervoet: Basotho forces led by Moshoeshoe defeat the British over the British imposed Walden line
1939 – Heinkel He 176 rocket plane flies for 1st time, at Peenemunde
1956 – Harry Warren, James Lawrence, Ribert E. Lee, and James Hilton’s musical “Shangri-La”, based on Hilton’s novel “Lost Horizon”, and featuring Jack Cassidy and Alice Ghostley, closes at Winter Garden Theater, NYC, after 21 performances
1966 – Vice Admiral William F. Raborn Jr., USN, ends term as 7th director of CIA
1977 – US President Jimmy Carter cans B-1A bomber later “B-1’s the B-52”
1988 – French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre is excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church
2014 – Australian entertainer Rolf Harris is convicted of indecent assault in London, England
2022 – Ketanji Brown Jackson (51) sworn in as 104th justice of US Supreme Court, replacing Stephen Breyer (83) upon his retirement; 1st Black woman (6th female, and 3rd Black) to be seated