July 24
1567: Mary, Queen of Scots, was forced to abdicate her throne to her 1-year-old son James.
1847: Mormon leader Brigham Young and his followers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in present-day Utah.
1866: Tennessee became the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War.
1915: The SS Eastland, carrying over 2,500 passengers, capsized at Chicago’s Clark Street Bridge, killing an estimated 844 people.
July 25
1866: Ulysses S. Grant was named General of the Army of the United States, the first officer to hold the rank.
1956: The SS Andrea Doria collided with the Stockholm off the New England coast, killing 51 people before sinking the next morning.
1960: A Woolworth’s in Greensboro, NC, ended its whites-only lunch counter policy after nearly six months of sit-in protests.
1972: The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was exposed, revealing that Black men were left untreated for decades so researchers could study the disease—over 100 died.
July 26
1775: The Continental Congress established a Post Office and appointed Benjamin Franklin its Postmaster-General.
1947: President Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the CIA and reorganizing the U.S. military.
1953: Fidel Castro began his revolt against Fulgencio Batista in an unsuccessful attack on an army barracks in eastern Cuba.
1990: President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, prohibiting discrimination based on mental or physical disabilities.
July 27
1789: President George Washington signed a measure establishing the Department of Foreign Affairs, forerunner of the Department of State.
1909: During the first official test of the U.S. Army’s first airplane, Orville Wright flew himself and a passenger, Lt. Frank Lahm, above Fort Myer, Virginia, for one hour and 12 minutes.
1940: Billboard magazine published its first “music popularity chart” listing best-selling retail records.
1953: The Korean Armistice Agreement was signed at Panmunjom, ending three years of fighting on the Korean peninsula that killed an estimated 4 million people.
July 28
1794: Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just were executed by guillotine during the French Revolution.
1914: World War I began as Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.
1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he was increasing the number of American troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.
July 29
1890: Artist Vincent van Gogh, 37, died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.
1921: Adolf Hitler became the leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party.
1954: The first volume of JRR Tolkien’s novel “The Lord of the Rings” (“The Fellowship of the Ring”) was published.
1981: Britain’s Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
July 30
1619: The first representative assembly in Colonial America convened in Jamestown in the Virginia Colony.
1916: German saboteurs blew up a munitions plant on Black Tom, an island near Jersey City, New Jersey, killing about a dozen people.
1956: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a measure making “In God We Trust” the national motto, replacing “E Pluribus Unum.”
