July 26th in History

657   Battle of Siffin, the first Muslim civil war or 'fitna'.

1775   The birth of what would later become the United States Post Office Department is established by the Second Continental Congress.

1788   New York ratifies the United States Constitution and becomes the 11th state of the United States.

Liberian flag

1847   Liberia, founded by freed American slaves, declares independence from the United States; celebrated as Liberian Independence Day

1856   Birth of George Bernard Shaw, Irish writer, Nobel Laureate (d. 1950)

1875   Birth of Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist (d. 1961)

1891   France annexes Tahiti.

1894   Birth of Aldous Huxley, English-born author of "Brave New World" (d. 1963)

1908   United States Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte issues an order to immediately staff the Office of the Chief Examiner (later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation).

1922   Birth of Blake Edwards, American film director

1928   Birth of Stanley Kubrick, American film director (d. 1999)

1936   The Axis Powers decide to intervene in the Spanish Civil War.

1941   World War II: In response to the Japanese occupation of French Indo-China, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the seizure of all Japanese assets in the United States.

1944   World War II: Soviet army enters Lviv, major city of western Ukraine, liberating it from the Nazis. Only 300 Jewish survivors left, out of 160,000 Jews in Lviv prior to Nazi occupation.
         – The first German V-2 rocket hits Great Britain.

1945   The Labour Party wins the United Kingdom general election of July 5 by a landslide, removing Winston Churchill from power.
          – The Potsdam Declaration is signed in Potsdam, Germany.

          – The US Navy cruiser Indianapolis arrives at Tinian with the warhead for the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

President Harry S. Truman

1947   Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs 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.

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

1952   Adlai E. Stevenson was nominated for president by the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Fidel Castro, on viewer's right

1953   Fidel Castro leads anunsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks, thus beginning the Cuban Revolution.  Castro presided as the dictator of Cuba from the conclusion of the Revolution in 1959 until he resigned in favor of his brother in 2008.
         – 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 nationalized the Suez Canal, after Britain and the U.S. refused to fund the building of the High Aswan Dam over the recognition of communist China by Egypt during cold war tension between China and Taiwan.  That led to the Suez Crisis, and a war beteen Egypt on one side, and Israel, France, and the UK.  Egypt had earlier unilaterally abrogated the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 which had given them a lease on the canal in exchange for the financing of the canal by the English and French. (Those regular readers of today in histoy here may recall the invasion of Egypt by Napoleon and the subsequent invasion by the English here, which was expanded on during the two world wars.)  The Suez Canal today remains an important short cut for shipping between Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, much as the Panama Canal is a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific in the western hemisphere. The southern end of the canal opens into the Red Sea, which debouches past the horn of Africa, current source of major problems with piracy affecting the shipping going through the Suez Canal.

1958   Explorer 4 is launched to study the Van Allen belt.

1963   Syncom 2, part of an early communications satellite series, and the world's first geosynchronous satellite, is launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta B booster.
       – The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, originally intended to help administer the Marshal plan after WW II, developed into an international forum devoted to democracy and market economies, voted to admit Japan.

1964  Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa and six others were convicted of fraud and conspiracy in the handling of a union pension fund.

Quebec flag

1971   Launch of Apollo 15, manned moon mission.

1977   The National Assembly of Quebec imposes the use of French as the official language of the provincial government.

1989   A federal grand jury indicts Cornell University student Robert T. Morris, Jr. for releasing the Morris worm, thus becoming the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

1990   The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is signed into law by President George H. W. Bush.

2000   A federal judge approved a $1.25 billion settlement between Swiss banks and more than a half million plaintiffs who alleged the banks had hoarded money deposited by Holocaust victims.

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



Discovery