July 22

838 –  An army of the Byzantine emperor Theophilos suffers a heavy defeat by an army of the Abbasid caliphate at Anzen in modern day northeastern Turkey

1099 – Godfrey of Bouillon is elected the first Defender of the Holy Sepulcher of The Kingdom of Jerusalem during the First Crusade

1456 – John Hunyadi, Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary, defeats Mehmet II of the Ottoman Empire during the moslem siege of Belgrade.

1587 – A second group of English settlers arrives on Roanoke Island off North Carolina to reestablish the deserted colony.

1686 – Albany, New York is formally chartered as a municipality by Governor Thomas Dongan.

1793 – The Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first recorded human to complete a transcontinental crossing of North America.

1796 – Surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company name an area in Ohio “Cleveland” after Gen. Moses Cleaveland, the superintendent of the surveying party.

1864 – Outside Atlanta, Confederate General John Bell Hood leads an unsuccessful attack on Union troops under General William T. Sherman situated on Bald Hill.

1893 – After admiring the view from the top of Pikes Peak, Katharine Lee Bates writes “America the Beautiful”.

1933 – Aviator Wiley Post returns to Floyd Bennett Field in New York City, completing the first solo flight around the world.

1934 – Gangster John Dillinger is shot and killed by FBI agents trying to escape after exiting the Biograph Theater in Chicago

1937 – The  Senate votes down President Roosevelt’s proposal to add more Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States.

1942 – Compulsory civilian gasoline rationing begins in the U.S. during World War II. There was no shortage of gasoline,  in fact we had more gasoline production capacity than demand. The problem was a shortage of rubber for tires from the Dutch East Indies that was occupied by the Japanese.

1943 – Allied forces capture Palermo during the Allied invasion of Sicily.

1946 – The Israeli Irgun militia bombs the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, headquarters of British civil and military administration for Mandatory Palestine.

1973 – Pan Am Flight 816, a Boeing 707, enroute from New Zealand to San Francisco, crashes after takeoff from Faa’a International Airport in Papeete, French Polynesia, killing 68 of the 69 passengers and all 10 crew aboard

1974 – Students of Southwestern Bell Telephone’s 23 Desk Directory Assistance class 74-6 begin training.

1992 – Fearing extradition to the U.S., Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar escapes from his prison near Medellín.

1993 – Levees on the Mississippi river near Kaskaskia, Illinois rupture, forcing the entire town to evacuate by barge.

2003 – Troops of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division and 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, attack a compound in Mosul Iraq, killing Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay