1469 – Wars of the Roses: The Battle of Edgecote Moor, pitting the forces of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick against those of Edward IV of England, takes place.
1745 – The first recorded women’s cricket match takes place near Guildford, England.
1775 – The office that 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.
1803 – The Surrey Iron Railway, arguably the world’s first public railway, opens in south London, United Kingdom.
1882 – Premiere of Richard Wagner’s opera Parsifal at Bayreuth.
1890 – In Buenos Aires, Argentina the Revolución del Parque takes place, forcing President Miguel Ángel Juárez Celman’s resignation.
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).
1936 – The Axis powers decide to intervene in the Spanish Civil War.
1945 – The Labour Party wins the United Kingdom general election of July 5 by a landslide, removing Winston Churchill from power.
1945 – The Potsdam Declaration is signed in Potsdam, Germany.
1947 – 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 – President Harry S. Truman signs Executive Order 9981, desegregating the military of the United States.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
1951 – Walt Disney’s 13th animated film, Alice in Wonderland, premieres in London.
1953 – Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks, thus beginning the Cuban Revolution. The movement took the name of the date: 26th of July Movement
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.
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 Bush.
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.
Births
1875 – Carl Jung, Swiss Psychiatrist (founded analytic psychology)
1894 – Aldous Huxley, English author (Brave New World, Island)
1928 – Stanley Kubrick, American director (2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr Strangelove, Lolita)
Deaths
1984 – George Gallup, American survey sampling pioneer and inventor of the Gallup poll