20th July, on this day

514 St Hormisdas begins his reign as Catholic Pope
1304 Wars of Scottish Independence: Fall of Stirling Castle - King Edward I of England takes the last rebel stronghold of the war.
1402 Ottoman-Timurid Wars: Battle of Ankara - Timur, ruler of Timurid Empire, defeated forces of the Ottoman Empire sultan Bayezid I.
1656 Swedish forces under the command of King Charles X Gustav defeats the forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the Battle of Warsaw.
1712 The Riot Act takes effect in Great Britain.
1738 North America: French explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de la Vérendrye reaches the western shore of Lake Michigan.
1773 Scottish settlers arrive at Pictou, Nova Scotia (Canada)
1810 Colombia declared independence from Spain
1837 Opening of London's first major railway station - at Euston
1858 Fee 1st charged to see a baseball game (NY beats Bkln 22-18)
1861 Confederate state's congress began holding sessions in Richmond, Va
1864 Battle of Peachtree Creek-Atlanta Campaign
1866 Austro-Prussian War: Battle of Lissa - The Austrian Navy , led by Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff, defeats the Italian Navy near the island of Vis in the Adriatic Sea.
1868 1st use of tax stamps on cigarettes
1871 Founding of the English Football Asssociation's Challenge Cup Competition - which becomes known as the FA Cup
1871 British Columbia becomes 6th Canadian province
1872 Mahlon Loomis receives patent for wireless ... the radio is born
1877 Rioting in Baltimore, Maryland by Baltimore and Ohio Railroad workers is put down by the state militia, resulting in nine deaths. 81 Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull, surrenders to federal troops
1881 Indian Wars:Sioux Chief Sitting Bull leads the last of his fugitive people in surrender to US troops at Fort Buford, North Dakota
1885 The Football Association legalises professionalism in football under pressure from the British Football Association.
1894 2000 fed troops recalled from Chicago, having ended Pullman strike
1903 Giuseppe Sarto elected Pope Pius X
1903 Ford Motor Company shipped its first car.
1907 A train wreck on the Pere Marquette Railroad near Salem, Michigan kills thirty and injures seventy more.
1916 World War I: In Armenia, Russian troops capture Gumiskhanek.
1917 In the Pact of Corfu, Serbs, Croats and Slovenes agree to form a union called Yugoslavia
1917 WW I draft lottery held; number 258 is 1st drawn
1918 World War I: German troops cross the Marne.
1921 Air mail service begins between New York City and San Francisco.
1922 Togo made a mandate of the League of Nations
1924 Teheran, Persia comes under martial law after the American vice consul, Robert Imbrie, is killed by a religious mob enraged by rumors he had poisoned a fountain and killed several people.
1926 A convention of the Methodist Church votes to allow women to become priests.
1928 The government of Hungary issues a decree ordering Gypsies to end their nomadic ways, settle permanently in one place, and subject themselves to the same laws and taxes as other Hungarians.
1929 Soviet troops attempt to cross the Amur River into Manchuria near Blagoveschensk as tensions mount between the Soviet Union and the Republic of China.
1932 In Washington, D.C., police fire tear gas on World War I veterans part of the Bonus Expeditionary Force who attempt to march to the White House.
1932 Crowds in the capitals of Bolivia and Paraguay demand their governments declare war on the other after fighting on their border.
1933 Vice-Chancellor of Germany Franz von Papen and Vatican Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli sign a concordat on behalf of their respective nations.
1933 In London, 500,000 march against anti-Semitism.
1933 In Germany two-hundred Jewish merchants are arrested in Nuremberg and paraded through the streets.
1934 Labor unrest in the US, as police in Minneapolis fire upon striking truck drivers, wounding fifty; Seattle police led by the mayor police fire tear gas on and club 2,000 striking longshoremen, and the governor of Oregon calls out the National Guard to break a strike on the Portland docks.
1935 In Switzerland a Royal Dutch Airlines plane en route from Milan to Frankfurt crashes into a Swiss mountain, killing thirteen.
1936 The Montreux Convention is signed in Switzerland, authorizing Turkey to fortify the Dardanelles and Bosphorus but guaranteeing free passage to ships of all nations in peacetime.
1937 Two black men accused of stabbing a policeman are taken by a mob from the county jail in Tallahassee, Florida and lynched.
1938 The Justice Department files suit in New York City against the motion picture industry charging violations of anti-trust law. The case would eventually result in a break-up of the industry in 1948.
1938 Finland awarded 1940 Olympic games after Japan withdraws
1940 Denmark leaves the League of Nations.
1940 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Hatch Act of 1939, limiting political activity by Federal government employees.
1940 First singles chart is published in the USA by Billboard. The No 1 record is I'll Never Smile Again by the Tommy Dorsey Band with vocals by Frank Sinatra
1941 Soviet leader Joseph Stalin consolidates the Commissariats of Home Affairs and National Security to form the NKVD and names Lavrenti Beria its chief.
1942 World War II: Red Army troops take bridgeheads over the Don River near Voronezh.
1942 World War II: The first unit of the Women's Army Corps begins training in Des Moines, Iowa.
1943 World War II: American and Canadian troops conquer Enna on Sicily.
1944 President FDR nominated for an unprecedented 4th term at Dem convention
1944 US invades Japanese-occupied Guam in WW II
1944 World War II: German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt by German staff officer Count Claus Schenk Von Stauffenberg who explodes a bomb inside Hitler's headquarters at Rastenberg in East Prussia. Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators are rounded up and executed
1944 Fifty are hurt in rioting in front of the presidential palace in Mexico City.
1945 The US Congress approves the Bretton Woods Agreement.
1946 World War II: The US Congress's Pearl Harbor Committee says Franklin D. Roosevelt was completely blameless for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and calls for a unified command structure in the armed forces.
1947 Police in Burma arrest former Prime Minister U Saw and 19 others on charges of assassinating Prime Minister U Aung San and seven members of his cabinet.
1947 The Viceroy of India says the people of the Northwest Frontier Province overwhelmingly voted the previous day to join Pakistan rather than India.
1948 US President Harry S. Truman issues a peacetime military draft in the US amid increasing tensions with the Soviet Union.
1948 In New York City, twelve leaders of the Communist Party USA are indicted under the Smith Act including William Z. Foster and Gus Hall.
1949 Israel's 19 month war of independence ends
1950 Cold War: In Philadelphia, Harry Gold pleads guilty to spying for the Soviet Union by passing secrets from atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs.
1951 King Abdullah I of Jordan is assassinated by a Palestinian while attending Friday prayers in Jerusalem.
1953 The United Nations Economic and Social Council votes to make UNICEF a permanent agency.
1954 Germany: Otto John, head of West Germany's secret service, defects to East Germany.
1954 At Geneva, Switzerland, an armistice is signed that ends fighting in Vietnam and divides the country along the 17th parallel.
1954 Tennis Champ Maureen Connolly's right leg is crushed in an accident
1956 France recognizes Tunisia's independence
1958 Twenty-six are dead in an explosion at a military base near Kokin Breg, Yugoslavia.
1959 The Organization for European Economic Cooperation admits Spain.
1960 1st submerged submarine to fire Polaris missile (George Washington)
1960 USSR recovered 2 dogs; 1st living organisms to return from space
1960 Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) elects Sirimavo Bandaranaike Prime Minister, the world's first elected female head of government
1960 Belgium defends its intervention in the Congo to the United Nations Security Council while the government of the Congo appeals to the Soviet Union to send troops to push back the Belgians. The governments of the US and France and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization warn the Soviets to stay out of the dispute.
1960 The head of the Physics Department at the Israel Institute of Technology, Kurt Sitte, is arrested for espionage.
1961 French military forces break the Tunisian siege of Bizerte.
1962 The opening of the first public hovercraft service - sailing between Rhyl in north Wales to Wallasey
1964 1st surfin' record to go number 1-Jan and Dean's "Surf City"
1964 Vietnam War: Viet Cong forces attack the capital of Dinh Tuong Province, Cai Be, killing 11 South Vietnamese military personnel and 40 civilians (30 of which are children).
1965 In Hayneville, Alabama, two civil rights protesters, one a priest and the other a seminarian, are shot by a deputy sheriff. The seminarian dies of his wounds.
1965 Turkish prime minister Suat Hayri Urguplu returns from a visit to Moscow and announces the Soviet Union will provide aid to his country.
1967 Race riots in Memphis, Tenn
1968 Jane Asher breaks her engagement with Paul McCartney on live TV
1968 Iron Butterfly's "In-a-gadda-da-vida" becomes the 1st heavy metal
song to hit the US charts, it comes in at number 117
1969 1st men on Moon, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, Apollo 11
1969 Cease fire announced between Honduras and El Salvador, 6 days after the beginning of the "Football War"
1970 1st baby born on Alcatraz Island
1971 The Soviet Union says it will support the People's Republic of China's admission to the United Nations
1973 The US Senate passes the War Powers Act.
1973 Vietnam War: In testimony by Assistant Secretary of Defense Jerry Friedheim to the US Senate Committee on Armed Services, the US Defense Department admits it lied to US Congress about bombing Cambodia .
1973 Seventy-three government officials and military officers are charged with conspiracy to overthrow the Greek government.
1973 Palestianian terrorists hijack a Japan Airlines jet en route from Amsterdam to Japan and force it down in Dubai.
1973 First coast-to-coast black-owned and operated radio network: The National Black Network (NBN) begins operations.
1974 Turkish occupation of Cyprus: Forces from Turkey invade Cyprus after a "coup d' etat", organised by the dictator of Greece, against president Makarios. NATO's Council praises the US and the United Kingdom for attempts to settle the dispute. Syria and Egypt put their militaries on alert.
1975 India expels three reporters from The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and Newsweek because they refused to sign a pledge to abide by government censorship.
1976 Unmanned US spacecraft Viking 1 makes a successful soft landing on the surface of Mars following an 11 month voyage from Earth
1977 Flash flood hits Johnstown, Pa, kills 80 and causing $350 million damage
1977 The Central Intelligence Agency releases documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind control experiments
1979 44-kg Newfoundland dog pulls 2293-kg load, Bothell, Wash
1980 The United Nations Security Council votes 14-0 that member states should not recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
1982 An IRA terrorist bomb in Hyde Park, London kills 3 members of the Blues and Royals during the Changing of the Guard ceremony. Two hours later 8 bandsmen are killed by an IRA bomb planted at the bandstand in Regent's Park
1983 The Israeli cabinet votes to withdraw troops from Beirut but to remain in southern Lebanon.
1984 Officials of the Miss America pageant ask Vanessa Lynn Williams to quit after Penthouse published nude photos of her
1985 Divers find wreck of Spanish galleon Atocha
1986 In South Africa, police fire tear gas into a church service for families of those held under the government's emergency decrees.
1987 UN Security Council Resolution 598, condemning the Iran-Iraq War and demanding cease-fire, is unanimously adopted.
1989 Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is placed under house arrest for outspoken attacks on the country's military rulers
1990 A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb explodes at the International Stock Exchange in London.
1991 Mike Tyson is accused of raping a Miss Black America contestant
1992 Václav Havel resigns as president of Czechoslovakia.
1994 Israel's Shimon Peres visits Jordan, the highest ranking Israeli official to do so
1994 Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's Fragment Q1 hits Jupiter. .
1996 In Spain, an ETA bomb at an airport kills 35
1998 Two hundred aid workers from CARE International, Doctors Without Borders and other aid groups leave Afghanistan on orders of the Taliban.
1999 Falun Gong is banned in the People's Republic of China, and a large scale crackdown of the practice is launched.
2000 The leaders of Salt Lake City's bid to win the 2002 Winter Olympics are indicted by a federal grand jury for bribery, fraud, and racketeering.
2000 In Zimbabwe, Parliament opens its new session and seats opposition members for the first time in a decade.
2000 Terrorist Carlos the Jackal sues France in the European Court of Human Rights for allegedly torturing him.
2001 The 27th Annual G8 summit opens in Genoa. An Italian protester in Genoa, Italy. Carlo Giuliani, is shot by police.
2002 A fire in a discotheque in Lima, Peru kills over twenty-five.
2003 Sixteen people are injured after two bombs explode outside a tax office in Nice, France

20th July 2006

Annan demands Lebanon ceasefire

US 'worst' for online child abuse

Gates gives $287m to HIV research

20th July 2007

Denmark ends secret Iraq airlift

Bush to undergo medical procedure

Ancient Darfur lake 'is dried up'

20th July 2008

Coalition 'bombs Afghan police'

Betancourt in plea to Farc rebels

Nine face stoning death in Iran

20th July 2009

Afghan mountaineers make history

US to add 22,000 troops to army

Why China takes no risks with flu

20th July 20010

6 Turkish soldiers killed by rebels

Powers back Afghan takeover date

Russia to build a new spaceport

Birthdates which occurred on 20th July :

1304 Francesco Petrarch Italy, poet (Italia Mia)
1519 Innocent IX 230th Roman Catholic pope (1591)
1785 Mahmud II Ottoman sultan, Westernizer, reformer
1864 Erik Karlfeldt Sweden, poet (Nobel 1918-refused; 1931-posthumous)
1890 Theda Bara actress (Under Two Flags, Cleopatra) (or 0729)
1890 Verna Felton Salinas Calif, actress (Hilda-December Bride)
19-- Chris Cornell Wash, rock drummer (Soundgarden-Badmotorfinger)
19-- Elizabeth Bennett Yorkshire England, actress (Enid-You Again?)
19-- Rodney Eastman actor (Beverly Hills Bodysnatchers)
1919 Sir Edmund Hillary one of 1st 2 men to scale Mt Everest
1920 Elliot L Richardson Attorney General (1973)/Sec of Defense (1973)
1920 Lev Aronin USSR, International Chess Master (1950)
1924 Lola Albright Akron, Ohio, actress (Delta Country, Kid Galahad)
1924 Thomas Berger US, novelist (Vital Parts, Little Big Man)
1930 Sally Ann Howes London England, actress (Dead of Night)
1932 Nam June Paik Seoul Korea, video artist (The Medium is the Medium)
1933 Nelson Doubleday publisher (Doubleday)/owner (NY Mets)
1938 Diana Rigg Doncaster England, actress (Emma Peel-Avengers, Hospital)
1938 Jo Ann Campbell Jacksonville Fla, Lawrence Welk's champagne lady
1938 Natalie Wood [Natasha Gurdin], SF, (Gypsy, Rebel Without a Cause)
1939 Judy Chicago [Cohen], Chicago, artist (The Dinner Party)
1940 Tony Oliva ball player, batting champ (AL Rookie of Year 1964)
1941 Vladimir A Lyakhov cosmonaut (Soyuz 32, T-9)
1943 John Lodge bassist (Moody Blues)
1944 T.G. Sheppard country singer (Only 1 You, Without You)
1946 Kim Carnes singer (Bette Davis Eyes)
1947 Carlos Santana Mexico, musician (Santana-Black Magic Woman)
1947 Gerd Binnig Frankfurt, physicist (tunneling microscope-Nobel 1986)
1947 James Harris Monroe La, NFL quarterback (Buffalo, LA, San Diego)
1954 Jay Jay French NYC, guitarist (Twisted Sister-Not Gonna Take It)
1955 Michael Anthony bassist (Van Halen)
1956 Mima Jausovec Yugoslavia, tennis player (French Open-1977)
1956 Paul Cook drummer (Sex Pistols)
1957 Donna Dixon Va, actress, Mrs Dan Ackwoyd (Couch Trip, Bossom Buddies)
1958 Michael McNeill rocker (Simple Minds-Don't You Forget About Me)
1968 Chris Kennedy actor (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure)
1978 Charlie Korsmo actor (Dick Tracy, What About Bob)

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Deaths which occurred on July 20th:
1609 Federico Zuccari Italian Mannerist painter, dies (birth date unknown)
1951 Abdullah Ibn Hussein Jordan's King assassinated in Jerusalem
1954 Blair Moody (Sen-Mich), dies at 52
1957 Phil Hanna singer (Once Upon a Tune), dies at 46
1974 Allen Jenkins actor (Fugitive from a Chain Gang), dies at 74
1983 Frank Reynolds news anchor (ABC Evening News), dies at 59
1986 Helen Craig actress (Rich Man Poor Man), dies at 74

Golden Link 1/ On this day 20th July

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