1487 – Citizens of Leeuwarden, Netherlands strike against a ban on foreign beer.
1567 – Mary, Queen of Scots, is forced to abdicate and replaced by her 1-year-old son James VI.
1823 – Slavery is abolished in Chile.
1823 – In Maracaibo, Venezuela the naval Battle of Lake Maracaibo takes place, where Admiral José Prudencio Padilla, defeats the Spanish Navy, thus culminating the independence for the Gran Colombia.
1847 – After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City.
1866 – Tennessee becomes the first U.S. state to be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War.
1911 – Hiram Bingham III re-discovers Machu Picchu, “the Lost City of the Incas”.
1929 – The Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, goes into effect (it is first signed in Paris on August 27, 1928 by most leading world powers).
1935 – The Dust Bowl heat wave reaches its peak, sending temperatures to 109 °F (43 °C) in Chicago and 104 °F (40 °C) in Milwaukee.
American academic, explorer and politician Hiram Bingham (left), who made public the existence of the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu in 1911 with the guidance of local farmers.
1959 – At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev have a “Kitchen Debate”.
1967 – During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declares to a crowd of over 100,000 in Montreal: Vive le Québec libre! (“Long live free Quebec!”); the statement angered the Canadian government and many Anglophone Canadians.
1969 – Apollo 11 splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
1974 – The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that President Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and they order him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.
1980 – The Quietly Confident Quartet of Australia wins the Men’s 4 x 100 meter medley relay at the Moscow Olympics, the only time the United States has not won the event at Olympic level.
1983 – The Black July anti-Tamil riots begin in Sri Lanka, killing between 400 and 3,000. Black July is generally regarded as the beginning of the Sri Lankan Civil War.
1983 – George Brett batting for the Kansas City Royals against the New York Yankees, has a game-winning home run nullified in the “Pine Tar Incident”.
2001 – Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last Tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, is sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, becoming the first monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office.
Births
1783 – Simón Bolívar, Venezuelan political and military leader (freed 6 Latin American republics from Spanish rule)
1802 – Alexandre Dumas, French author (The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo)
1897 – Amelia Earhart, American aviator and 1st woman to fly solo across the Atlantic
Deaths
1862 – Martin Van Buren, 8th US president (1837-41)