July 25th
 

306 ~ Constantine I proclaimed Roman emperor by his troops.

1799 ~ At Aboukir in Egypt, Napoleon I of France defeated 10,000 Ottomans under Mustafa Pasha.

1834 ~ Death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poet.

1848 ~ Birthday of Arthur Balfour, UK Prime Minister.

1907 ~ Korea became a protectorate of Japan.

1909 ~ Louis Bleriot made the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine (Calais to Dover in 37 minutes).

1920 ~ Birthday of Rosalind Franklin, Scientist.

1917 ~ Sir Thomas Whyte introduced the first income tax in Canada as a "temporary" measure.

1978 ~ Birthday of first test-tube baby, Louise Brown.

1997 ~ Death of Ben Hogan, one of the world's best known golfers.

July 26th
 

1469 ~ The Wars of the Roses: Rebel victory at the Battle of Edgecote Moor

1856 ~ Birthday of George Bernard Shaw, Author & Playwright, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1925.

1887 ~ L. L. Zamenhof published "Dr. Esperanto's International Language".

1895 ~ Birthday of Aldous Huxley, Author.

1908 ~ Birthday of Salvador Allende, President of Chile.

1928 ~ Birthday of Stanley Kubrick, movie director.

1943 ~ Birthday of Mick Jagger, Musician.

1947 ~ Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act into United States law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.

It seems that a new set up is on the way.

1956 ~ Egypt seizes Suez Canal

1991 ~ Paul Reubens, better known as Pee Wee Herman, was arrested for masturbating at a Sarasota, Florida adult theatre.

July 27th
 

1694 ~ A Royal Charter was granted to the Bank of England.

1794 ~ French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre was arrested after encouraging the execution of more than 17,000 "enemies of the Revolution".

1844 ~ Death of John Dalton, English chemist.

1866 ~ An Atlantic cable was successfully laid, allowing transatlantic telegraph communication for the first time.

1904 ~ Birthday of Isaac Bashevis Singer, writer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1978.

1940 ~ Bugs Bunny makes his official debut in the animated cartoon “A Wild Hare”.

1955 ~ The Allied occupation of Austria stemming from World War II, ends (started on May 9, 1945).

2003 ~ Death of Bob Hope.

July 28th
 

1540 ~ Thomas Cromwell was executed on order from the king on charges of treason. A great-great grand nephew, Oliver, also became involved in politics.

1741 ~ Death of Antonio Vivaldi, Composer.

1750 ~ Death of Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer.

1794 ~ Maximilien Robespierre was guillotined in front of a cheering crowd, for sending thousands of others to a similar fate during the French Revolution.

1817 ~ Death of Jane Austen, Author.

1866 ~ Birthday of Beatrix Potter, Author.

1929 ~ Birthday of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.

1914 ~ World War I begins: Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.

1965 ~ Vietnam War: US President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his order to increase the number of United States troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.

1996 ~ Kennewick Man, the remains of a prehistoric man, was discovered near Kennewick, Washington.

July 29th
 

1588 ~ Battle of Gravelines: The Spanish Armada was defeated by the English navy off the coast of Gravelines, France.

1793 ~ John Graves Simcoe decided to build a fort and settlement at Toronto, having sailed into the bay there.

1856 ~ Death of Robert Schumann, Composer.

1871 ~ Birthday of Grigori Rasputin, Russian Spiritualist.

1907 ~ Sir Robert Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scouts movement with the first scout camp at Brownsea Island.

1883 ~ Birthday of Benito Mussolini, Italian Dictator.

1890 ~ Death of Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter.

1954 ~ First part of The Lord of the Rings was published in the UK.

1958 ~ The United States Congress formally created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

1981 ~ Lady Diana Spencer married Charles, Prince of Wales.

July 28th
 

1818 ~ Birthday of Emily Brontë, English novelist

1863 ~ Birthday of Henry Ford, American industrialist

1898 ~ Death of Otto von Bismarck, German chancellor.

1930 ~ In Montevideo, Uruguay won the first Football World Cup.

1945 ~ World War II: A Japanese submarine sank the USS Indianapolis, killing 883 seamen in the worst single loss in the history of the United States Navy.

1947 ~ Birthday of Arnold Schwarzenegger, actor, 38th Governor of California

1966 ~ At Wembley Stadium, host England won the first televised Football World Cup, beating Germany 4 to 2.

1971 ~ Apollo 15 landed on the Moon.

1975 ~ Death of James Blish, science fiction author.

2003 ~ In Mexico, the last 'old style' Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the assembly line.

July 31st
 

1498 ~ On his third voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus became the first European to discover the island of Trinidad.

1556 ~ Death of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits

1703 ~ Daniel Defoe was placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet.

1803 ~ Birthday of John Ericsson, Swedish inventor and engineer.

1886 ~ Death of Franz Liszt, Composer.

1912 ~ Birthday of Milton Friedman, recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in economics

1917 ~ The Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) started in Flanders. With casualties from both sides exceeding 550,000, the name Passcheddaele has come to be used as a synonym for pointless slaughter.

"...I died in Hell
(they called it Passchendaele) my wound was slight
and I was hobbling back; and then a shell
burst slick upon the duckboards; so I fell
into the bottomless mud, and lost the light"
Siegfried Sassoon

1945 ~ Pierre Laval, fugitive former leader of Vichy France, surrendered to Allied soldiers in Austria.

1971 ~ Apollo program: Apollo 15 astronauts became the first to ride in a lunar rover.

2001 ~ Death of Poul Anderson, science fiction author.

August 1st
 

1492 ~ Ferdinand and Isabella drove the Jews out of Spain.

1619 ~ First Black slaves landed in Jamestown, Virginia.

1744 ~ Birthday of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Scientist.

1779 ~ Birthday of Francis Scott Key, Composer of "The Star-Spangled Banner"

1790 ~ The first census of the United States was completed. The total population of the thirteen states was 3,929,214.

1819 ~ Birthday of Herman Melville, writer

1932 ~ Birthday of Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League

1944 ~ Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi occupation began in Warsaw, Poland.

1990 ~ Iraq invades Kuwait.

1992 ~ Death of Mikhail Tal, world chess champion.

August 2nd
 

338 BC ~ Philip of Macedon crushed Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea.

216 BC ~ Battle of Cannae: Hannibal destroyed the Roman army of Lucius Aemilius Paulus and Publius Terentius Varro in what is considered one of the great masterpieces of tactics.

1754 ~ Birthday of Pierre Charles L'Enfant, Architect & City Planner.

1870 ~ Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway opened in London.

1921 ~ Death of Enrico Caruso, Tenor.

1932 ~ Birthday of Peter O'Toole, Actor.

1934 ~ Adolf Hitler became Führer of Germany.

1951 ~ Birthday of Lance Ito, Judge

1976 ~ Death of Fritz Lang, Film Director.

1997 ~ Australian ski instructor Stuart Diver was rescued as the sole survivor from the Thredbo landslide in New South Wales, Australia, in which 18 lives were lost.

August 3rd
 

1492 ~ Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain.

1887 ~ Birthday of Rupert Brooke, Poet.

1900 ~ Birthday of John T. Scopes, defendant in the Monkey Trial.

1904 ~ Birthday of Clifford D. Simak, Science Fiction Author.

1914 ~ First World War: Germany declared war against France.

1924 ~ Death of Joseph Conrad, Writer.

1941 ~ Birthday of Martha Stewart, Home Economist.

1948 ~ Whittaker Chambers accused Alger Hiss of being a communist and a spy for the Soviet Union.

1958 ~ Nuclear submarine USS Nautilus traveled beneath the Arctic ice cap.

2000 ~ George W. Bush accepted the Republican presidential nomination at the party's convention in Philadelphia.

August 4th
 

1735 ~ Freedom of the press: New York Weekly Journal writer John Peter Zenger was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, on the basis that what he published was true.

1789 ~ The feudal system was abolished in France.

1792 ~ Birthday of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Poet

1840 ~ Birthday of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Sexologist.

1875 ~ Death of Hans Christian Andersen, Writer.

1901 ~ Birthday of Louis Armstrong, Jazz Musician.

1914 ~ World War I: The United Kingdom declared war on Germany and the United States proclaimed neutrality.

1929 ~ Birthday of Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the PLO.

1944 ~ A tip from a Dutch informer lead the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse where they found Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family.

1987 ~ The Federal Communications Commission rescinded the Fairness Doctrine which had required radio and television stations to "fairly" present controversial issues.

August 5th
 

1305 ~ William Wallace, who led Scottish resistance to England, was captured by the English near Glasgow and transported to London for trial and execution.

1583 ~ Sir Humphrey Gilbert established first English colony in North America, at what is now St John's, Newfoundland.

1861 ~ American Civil War: In order to help pay for the war effort, the United States government issued the first income tax as part of the Revenue Act of 1861 (3% of all incomes over US $800; rescinded in 1872).

1884 ~ The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty was laid on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor.

1895 ~ Death of Friedrich Engels, Socialist Philosopher.

1930 ~ Birthday of Neil Armstrong, Astronaut.

1962 ~ Death of Marilyn Monroe, Actress.

1984 ~ Death of Sir Richard Burton, Actor.

1963 ~ United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union signed a nuclear test ban treaty.

2000 ~ Death of Sir Alec Guinness, Actor.

August 6th
 

1776 ~ Birthday of Amedeo Avogadro, Chemist.

1806 ~ Francis I, the last Holy Roman Emperor, abdicated, thus ending the Holy Roman Empire.

1809 ~ Birthday of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Poet.

1881 ~ Birthday of Alexander Fleming, scientist.

1911 ~ Birthday of Lucille Ball, Actress, Comedienne.

1926 ~ Gertrude Ederle became first woman to swim the English Channel.

1945 ~ World War II: An nuclear bomb codenamed Little Boy was dropped by the American B-29 Enola Gay on the city of Hiroshima in Japan at 8:16 a.m., killing 80,000.

1943 ~ Birthday of Jon Postel, creator of DNS.

1962 ~ Jamaica became independent.

1991 ~ Tim Berners-Lee released his idea for the "World Wide Web"

August 7th
 

1516 ~ Birthday of Elizabeth Bathory, serial killer.

1742 ~ Birthday of Nathanael Greene, American Revolutionary War general.

1782 ~ George Washington ordered the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic "Purple Heart".

1816 ~ Simón Bolívar triumphed over Spain in the Battle of Boyacá.

1876 ~ Birthday of Mata Hari (Margaretha Zelle), spy.

1942 ~ Birthday of Garrison Keillor, radio host.

1944 ~ IBM dedicated the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).

1947 ~ Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, grounded on the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101 day 4,300 mile journey across the Pacific Ocean, proving that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.

1957 ~ Death of Oliver Hardy, Comedian, & Actor

1998 ~ Bombing of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya killed 224 people and injures over 4,500.

August 8th
 

1879 ~ Birthday of Emiliano Zapata, Mexican Revolutionary.

1902 ~ Birthday of Paul Dirac, Physicist.

1918 ~ World War I: Battle of Amiens - Canadian troops, backed by Australians, began a string of almost continuous victories with a push through the German front lines. German General Erich Ludendorff will later call this the "black day of the German army".

1929 ~ The German airship Graf Zeppelin began a round-the-world flight (ended on August 29).

1930 ~ Birthday of Andy Warhol, Painter.

1931 ~ Birthday of Sir Roger Penrose, Mathematical Physicist.

1937 ~ Birthday of Dustin Hoffman, Actor.

1945 ~ The United Nations Charter is ratified by the United States, and that nation became the first to join the new international organization.

1963 ~ Great Train Robbery: In England, a gang of 15 train robbers stole 2.6 million pounds in bank notes.

1974 ~ US President Richard Nixon announced his resignation (effective August 9).