July 1

1097 – The army of the First Crusade under the command of Prince Behemond of Antioch, defeats the army of Sultan Kilij Arslan at Dorylaeum near modern day Eskişehir, Turkey.

1431 – Forces of King John of Castile engage those of Sultan Muhammed of Granada at La Higueruela scoring a minor victory during the Reconquista of Spain.

1523 – Jan van Essen and Hendrik Vos, the first Lutheran martyrs, are burned at the stake in Brussels.

1770 – Lexell’s Comet, named after the man who computed its orbit – Anders Johan Lexell – is detected as passing closer to the Earth than any other comet in recorded history to that time, approaching to a distance of 0.0146 astronomical units, 1,360,000 miles.

1782 – During the Revolution, the US privateer, Captain Noah Stoddard of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, commanding the 16 gun schooner Scammel, and other privateer vessels raid the British settlement at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, following maxim #1; Pillage, then Burn, as they first loot, then destroy the town.

1855 – Under the terms of the Quinault Treaty, the Quinault and the Quileute indian tribes of western Washington state cede their lands to the U.S.

1862 – The Battle of Malvern Hill, near Richmond Virginia, takes place; the last of the ‘Seven Days Battles’ of the Union Virginia Peninsula Campaign during the Civil War.

1863 – The Battle of Gettysburg begins

1870 – Having been signed into law on June 22nd, the act forming the United States Department of Justice comes into effect.

1874 – The Sholes and Glidden typewriter, the first commercially successful model, goes on sale.

1881 – The world’s first international telephone call is made between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, and Calais, Maine.

1898 – The Battle of San Juan Hill is fought in Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish-American War.

1908 – SOS  ··· – – – ··· is adopted as the international distress signal.

1916 – On the first day of the Battle of the Somme during World War I, 19,000 soldiers of the British Army are killed and 40,000 wounded.

1922 – The Great Railroad Strike of 1922, by 7 of the 16 railroad labor organizations existing at the time, begins in the U.S.

1931 – Wiley Post and Harold Gatty successfully complete their flight of circumnavigation in a single-engined monoplane aircraft.

1942 – The First Battle of El Alamein begins during World War II

1946 – As the start of Operation Crossroads, off Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, the MK3 Nuclear bomb “Gilda“, identical to the one dropped on Nagasaki is dropped from B-29 Dave’s Dream of the 509th Bombardment Group, one of the photographic aircraft on the Nagasaki bombing mission, as the ‘Able’ shot during the first series of nuclear weapon tests after World War II.

1959 – The specific values for the international yard, avoirdupois pound and derived units, e.g. inch, mile and ounce, are adopted after agreement between the U.S., the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries.

1963 – ZIP codes are introduced for United States mail

1968 – The United States Central Intelligence Agency’s Phoenix Program, to destroy the Viet Cong operating in South Vietnam, is officially established.

1979 – Sony introduces the Walkman.

1984 – The PG-13 movie rating is introduced by the MPAA.

1991 – The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague.

2002 – The International Criminal Court is established at The Hague to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression.

2020 – The United States Mexico Canada Agreement – USMCA, replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement – NAFTA.