Today in History: July 26

657        Battle of Siffin: The first Muslim civil war between Ali ibn Abi Talib and Muawiyah I beside Euphrates River

811        Battle of Pliska: Bulgarians under Krum beat Byzantines. Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros I is killed and his heir Staurakios is seriously wounded.

920        Battle of Valdejunquera: Rout of an alliance of Christian troops from Navarre and Léon against the Muslims at Pamplona

1309      Henry VII is recognized King of the Romans by Pope Clement V

1469      Wars of the Roses: Battle of Edgecote Moor – Pitting the forces of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick against those of King Edward IV

1499      Spanish conquistador Alonso de Ojeda discovers Curacao Island

1509      The Emperor Krishnadevaraya ascends to the throne, marking the beginning of the regeneration of the Vijayanagara Empire

1529      Francisco Pizarro González, Spanish conquistador, is appointed governor of Peru

1576      Muitende Spanish troops conquer Aalst

1579      Francis Drake leaves San Francisco to cross Pacific Ocean

1581      Plakkaat van Verlatinghe (Act of Abjuration): The northern Low Countries declare their independence from the Spanish king, Philip II.

1588      English Admiral John Hawkins knighted for his actions against the Armada

1663      French troops invade papal territory Comtat Venaissin

1678      England and Netherlands signs treaty: sending ultimatum to France

1745      The first recorded women’s cricket match takes place near Guildford, England

1757      Battle at Hastenbeck: French army beats Duke of Cumberland

1758      French and Indian War: The Siege of Louisbourg ends with British forces defeating the French and taking control of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence

1760      Austrian troops occupy Fort Glatz Silezie

1775      US Continental Congress establishes United States Post Office in Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin takes office as Postmaster General

1803      The Surrey Iron Railway, arguably the world’s first public railway, opens in south London

1805      Naples/Calabria struck by Earthquake; about 26,000 die

1814      The Swedish–Norwegian War begins

1822      First day of the three-day Battle of Dervenakia, between the Ottoman Empire force led by Mahmud Dramali Pasha and the Greek Revolutionary force led by Theodoros Kolokotronis.

1826      Riots in Vilnius, Lithuania cause the death of many Jews

1835      First sugar cane plantation started in Hawaii

1847      Moses Gerrish Farmer builds first miniature train for children to ride

1847      The Liberian Declaration of Independence is signed making Liberia a sovereign nation, independent from the American Colonization Society

1858      Baron Lionel de Rothschild becomes the first Jewish person elected to the British Parliament

1863      Battle of Salineville Ohio, John Hunt Morgan and 364 troops surrender

1865      Patrick Francis Healy becomes the first African American awarded PhD (from University of Leuven, Belgium)

1865      The capital of New Zealand moves from Auckland to Wellington

1878      In California, poet and American West outlaw calling himself “Black Bart” makes his last clean getaway when he steals a safe box from a Wells Fargo stagecoach. The empty box found later with a taunting poem inside.

1881      French marines occupy Tunisian harbor city Sfax

1882      The Republic of Stellaland is founded in Southern Africa

1887      Publication of the Unua Libro, founding the Esperanto movement

1890      In Buenos Aires, Argentina the Revolución del Parque takes place, forcing President Miguel Ángel Juárez Celman’s resignation­

1892      Dadabhai Naoroji is elected as the first Indian Member of Parliament in Britain

1896      Vitascope Hall, first permanent for-profit movie theatre, opens in New Orleans

1897      Record 37.5 cm rainfall at Jewell, Maryland (state record)

1899      Ulises Heureaux, the 27th President of the Dominican Republic, is assassinated

1903      First automobile trip across the United States (San Francisco to New York) completed by Horatio Nelson Jackson and Sewall K. Crocker

1915      International School for Wijsbegeerte forms

1916      The US Protests the ‘Blacklist’ issued by the British forbidding trade with some 30 US firms

1918      Race riot in Philadelphia (three whites and one black killed)

1936      The Axis Powers Germany and Italy decide to intervene in the Spanish Civil War in support for Francisco Franco and the Nationalist faction

1937      End of the Battle of Brunete with Nationalist Victory in the Spanish Civil War

1941      World War II: US embargo on oil-export to Japan– In response to the Japanese occupation of French Indochina, the United States, Britain and the Netherlands freeze all Japanese assets and cut off oil shipments

1942      RC churches protest, Dutch bishops stand against spread of Judaism

1943      Record 120°F (49°C), Tishmoningo, Oklahoma (state record)

1944      Japanese suicide attack on US lines in Guam

1944      World War II: The Red Army enters Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, capturing it from the Nazis. Only 300 Jews survive out of 160,000 living in Lviv prior to occupation.

1944      The first German V-2 rocket hits Great Britain (nicknamed “gasometer”).

1945      The Labour Party wins the United Kingdom general election of July 5 by a landslide, removing Winston Churchill from power. Churchill resigns as Britain’s Prime Minister.

1945      World War II: Declaration of Potsdam: US, Britain and China demand the Japanese surrender during WWII

1945      Japanese government disregards US ultimatum

1945      World War II: US cruiser Indianapolis reaches Tinian with components and enriched uranium for the Little Boy nuclear bomb

1945      Physicist Raemer Schreiber and Lieutenant Colonel Peer de Silva depart Kirtland Army Air Field to transport the plutonium core for the Fat Man bomb (bombing of Nagasaki) to the island of Tinian where the bomb is assembled

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

1948      U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs Executive Order 9981, desegregating the military of the United States.

1948      First black host of a network show-CBS’ Bob Howard Show

1950      KNIL (Royal Dutch East Indies Army) unites

1951      Netherlands ends state of war with Germany

1952      King Farouk I of Egypt abdicates [Black Saturday]

1953      Fidel Castro leads a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks, intended to spark a revolution in Cuba

1953      Arizona Governor John Howard Pyle orders an anti-polygamy law enforcement crackdown on residents of Short Creek, Arizona, which becomes known as the Short Creek raid

1956      Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announces plan to nationalize Suez Canal, initiating the “Suez Crisis”

1957      USSR launches first intercontinental multistage ballistic missile

1957      Carlos Castillo Armas, Dictator and President of Guatemala, is assassinated by a palace guard with leftist sympathies

1958      Explorer program: Army launches fourth US successful satellite, Explorer IV

1962      Maria Oeljanov, first airship with nuclear missiles, arrives in Cuba

1963      Skopje, Yugoslavia, destroyed by earthquake, kills 1,100

1963      US Syncom 2, first geosynchronous communications satellite, launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta B booster

1963      The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development votes to admit Japan.

1964      Train from Povoa de Varzin, Portugal derails near Oporto killing 94

1965      Republic of Maldives gains independence from Britain (National Day)

1968      Vietnam War: South Vietnamese opposition leader Trương Đình Dzu is sentenced to five years hard labor for advocating the formation of a coalition government as a way to move toward an end to the war

1969      Sharon Sites Adams, 39, becomes first lady to solo sail the Pacific

1971      Apollo 15 launched (Scott and Irwin) to fourth manned landing on Moon

1972      Rockwell receives NASA contract to construct Space Shuttle

1974      France performs nuclear Test at Mururoa atoll

1974      Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis forms the country’s first civil government after seven years of military rule

1974      USSR’s Soyuz fails to dock with Salyut 3

1975      Soyuz 18B returns to Earth

1977      USSR performs underground nuclear Test

1977      The ‘Committee of 10’ formed by prominent Soweto residents, issues a program for the election of a new community board to have total autonomy in Soweto, South Africa

1978      France performs nuclear Test at Mururoa atoll

1979      Estimated 109 cm (43″) of rain falls in Alvin, Texas (national record)

1981      Two climbers fall 550 m down cliff near Angel Falls, Venezuela

1982      Canada’s Anik D1 Comsat launched by US Delta rocket

1982      Karen Dianne Baldwin, 18, of Canada, crowned 31st Miss Universe

1982      Indian film star Amitabh Bachchan is seriously injured filming a fight scene for the movie “Coolie”

1986      Lebanese kidnappers released Rev Lawrence Martin Jenco

1989      Robert T. Morris Jr, a student of Cornell University becomes the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after a federal grand jury indicts him for releasing the Morris worm

1990      US President George H. W. Bush signs Americans With Disabilities Act

1991      Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman) is arrested in Florida, for exposing himself at an adult movie theater

1992      Britain honors her dead in the Falklands War

1993      Asiana Airlines Flight 733 crashes into a ridge on Mt. Ungeo on its third attempt to land at Mokpo Airport, South Korea. 68 of the 116 people onboard are killed

1993      Mars Observer takes first photo of Mars, from 5 billion km

1994      Cambodia’s Red Khmer surprise attack on train, kills 13

1994      Turkish air force bombs Kurds, struggle in Iraq, 70 killed

1999      Fighting ceases between India and Pakistan in the Kargil War, Kashmir, after two months of fighting

2005      Space Shuttle program: STS-114 Mission – Launch of Discovery, NASA’s first scheduled flight mission after the Columbia Disaster in 2003

2005      Mumbai, India receives 99.5cm of rain (39.17 inches) within 24 hours, bringing the city to a halt for over 2 days

2005      Samir Geagea, the Lebanese Forces (LF) leader, is released after spending 11 years in a solitary confinement. His release came after the end of the Syrian occupation to Lebanon.

2008      Fifty-six people are killed and over 200 people are injured, in the Ahmedabad bombings in India

2009      The militant Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram attacks a police station in Bauchi, leading to reprisals by the Nigeria Police Force and four days of violence across multiple cities

2012      At least 200 people are killed in a day of violence in Syria

2012      Insurgent attack kills 19 people and destroys a helicopter at Baqubah, Iraq

2012      North Korea is hit by Tropical Storm Khanun, killing 88 people and leaving 60,000 people homeless

2013      57 people are killed in a market bombing in Parachinar, Pakistan

2014      While Israel reject long-term ceasefire that does not include destroying the Hamas tunnels, they agree to 12 hour ceasefire; Palestinian death toll in the Gaza Strip now exceeds 1000

2014      The Chinese government suspends the operations of a Shanghai meat dealer and makes arrests after the company sold out-of-date meat to fast food chains, including McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken

2016      The Sagamihara stabbings occur in Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. Nineteen people are killed

2016      Hillary Clinton becomes the first female nominee for President of the United States by a major political party at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

2016      Solar Impulse 2 becomes the first solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the Earth.

2017      US President Donald Trump announces policy to ban transgender people from the military, overturning Obama era changes

2017      Great Britain announces it will ban gasoline and diesel cars by 2040

2017      Three live king cobras reported found inside potato chip cans by customs officials in Los Angeles

2018      Facebook has the single worst day of any public company on the stock market – losing 19% or $119 billion market value

2018      Authorities in Stung Treng province, Cambodia, evacuate 25,000 below collapsed Laos dam as waters rise

2018      Over 700 immigrant children still separated from their parents in the US as court-imposed deadline to reunite them passes

2018      Observation of a black hole by The Very Large Telescope in Chile proves Albert Einstein’s prediction of “gravitational redshift”, published in “Journal Astronomy & Astrophysics”