Liberty Line: A "This Day in History" Timeline
of Events of Interest to Advocates of Liberty
for July

by Donald Burger, Attorney at Law

July 1:

1535: Sir Thomas Moore went on trial in England for treason.
1863: The three-day battle of Gettysburg began.
1898: Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders charged the hill in San Juan, Cuba.
1943: Paycheck withholding tax collection begins.
1966: The medicare federal insurance program went into effect.

July 02

1776: The Continental Congress passed a resolution that "these United States are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states."
1881: President James A. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a disappointed office seeker.
1890: Sherman Anti Trust Act passed.
1926: US Army Air Corp created.
1964: President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

July 03

1863: The three-day Battle of Gettysburg ended with a CSA retreat.
1930: The Veterans Administration formed.
1950: North Korean and US troops battled for the first time during the Korean War.

July 04

1776: The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.
1802: The U.S. Military Academy at West Point (New York) opened.
1804: Nathaniel Hawthorne born.
1826: Thomas Jefferson died.
1831: James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States, died.

July 05

1950: Private Kenneth Shadrick of Skin Fork, West Virginia, became the first US fatality in the Korean War.

July 06

1535: Sir Thomas Moore was executed for treason in England.
1777: British forces, led by General John Burgoyne, captured Fort Ticonderoga.
1854: The Republican Party founded at a convention in Jackson, Michigan.
1923: The U.S.S.R. was formed.

July 07

1846: the US annexation of California was proclaimed with the surrender of the Mexican garrison at Monterey.
1865: Four people were hanged in Washington, D.C., for conspiracy to kill President Lincoln.
1898: US annexed Hawaii.
1907: Novelist Robert Heinlein born.
1930: Construction began on Boulder Dan, later renamed Hoover Dam.
1958: President Eisenhower signed the bill making Alaska a state.

July 08

1889: Wall Street Journal first published.
1950: Douglas MacArthur became commander of UN forces in Korea.
1959: Major Dale R Buis of Imperial Beach, California and Master Sgt. Chester M Ovnand of Copperas Cove became the first US soldiers killed during the Vietnam War.

July 09

1776: The Declaration of Independence is read aloud to General George Washington's troops in New York.
1850: The 12th president of the United States, Zachary Taylor, died in office after serving only one year and four months.
1984: New York passes the first compulsory seat-belt law in the US.
1890: Wyoming became the 44th state.
1993: Famous economist Henry Hazlitt died at age 98.

July 10

1850: Vice President Millard Fillmore succeeded to the presidency following the death of Zachry Taylor the day before.
1925: The Scopes, "Monkey trial" began.
1925: Tass, the official news agency, was established in the USSR.
1940: the 114 day Battle of Britain began.
1951: Armistice talks disigned to end the Korean War began at Kaesong.

July 11

1767: John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the US, was born in Braintree, Mass.
1798: US Marine Corps created by Congress.
1804: Vice President Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a pistol duel near Weehawken, New Jersey.
1955: The US Air Force Academy was dedicated at Lowry AFB outside Colorado Springs, Colorado.

July 12

100 BC: Julius Caesar born.
1690: Protestant troops led by William of Orange defeated the Roman Catholic army of James II at the Battle of Boyne in Northern Ireland.
1812: US forces, under the command of General William Hull, invaded Canada during the War of 1812.
1817: Henry David Thoreau born in Concord, Mass.
1862: Congress authorized the Medal of Honor.
1864: George Washington Carver born.

July 13

1787: Congress enacted an ordinance governing the Northwest Territory.
1863: One thousand killed during rioting in New York City against the draft during the Civil War.

July 14

1789: Citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille prison and released seven prisoners.
1921: Sacco & Vanzetti were convicted in Dedham, Maine, of killing a shoe company paymaster and his guard. They were executed six years later.
1933: All political parties except the Nazi Party were outlawed in Germany.

July 15

1815: Napoleon surrendered and is exiled to St. Helena in the South Atlantic.
1834: The Inquisition officially ends in Spain, after 600 years.
1870: Georgia became the last of the Confederate States to be readmitted to the Union.
1971: President Nixon anounced he would visit the Peole's Republic of China to seek a "normalization of relations."

July 16

1790: District of Columbia established as the seat of the US government.
1918: Czar Nicholas II, his wife and their five children were executed by the Bolsheviks.
1935: The first parking meters were installed, in Oklahoma City.
1945: US exploded the first atomic bomb in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mixico at a site called Trinity.
1973: Former White House aid Alexander Butterfield publically revealed the exitence of President Nixon's secret taping system.

July 17

1821: Spain ceded Florida to the United States.
1898: The Spanish surrendered to the United States at Santiago, Cuba.

July 18

64: The Great Fire of Rome began.
1872: Britain introduced the secret ballot.

July 19

1848: One of the first women's rights conventions, called by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia C. Mott, convened in Seneca Falls, New York.
1870: The Franco-Prussian war began.
1941: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill launched his "V" for Victory campaign in Europe.

July 20

1881: Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull surrendered to Federal troops.
1917: The draft lottery for World War I began.
1944: A group of German officials failed in their assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler.

July 21

1885: Frances Parkinson Keyes born.
1925: The jury in the "Monkey Trial" voted to convict John T. Scopes.
1954: France surrendered North Vietnam to the Communists.

July 22

July 23

1914: Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia following the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand. The dispute eventually led to WW I.

July 24

1866: Tennessee bacame the first state to be redmitted th the Union after the Civil War.
1946: US detonated the atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in its first underwater test.
1959: Nixon debated Khrushchev on the merits of capitalism in the "Kitchen Debate," which took place in a model kitchen at a US exhibition in the USSR.
1974: The US Supreme Court unaminousluy ruled that President Richard M. Nixon had to turn over subpoened White House tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor.

July 25

1866: U.S. Grant was named General of the Army, the first officer to hold that rank.
1868: Congress passed an act creating the Wyoming Territory.
1952: Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth of the US.

July 26

1775: Ben Franklin became the first Postmaster General.
1947: President Truman signed the National Security Act, which created the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
1953: Fidel Castro began his revolt against the Batista regime with unsuccessful attacks on the army barracks in eastern Cuba.

July 27

1953: The Korean War armistice signed at Panmunjom, ending three years of fighting. It took 255 meetings and over two years to reach the agreement.
1974: The House Judiciary Committee voted 27 to 11 to recommend impeachment of Richard M. Nixon for conduct designed to obstruct justice.

July 28

1540: King Henry VIII's cheif minister, Thomas Cornwell, was executed.
1868: The Fourteenth Amendment, guaranteeing due process, was declared in effect.
1943: FDR announced the end of coffee rationing in the US.
1945: A US Army bomber crashed into the Empire State Building's 79th floor, killing 14 people.
1945: The US Senate ratified the UN charter by a 89 to 2 vote.

July 29

1588: England defeated the Spanish Armada in the Battle of Gravelines.

July 30

1691: The first legislative assembly in America, the House of Burgess, opened at Jamestown, Virginia.
1792: The French anthem, La Marseillaise, was first sung in Paris.
1916: German saboteurs blew up a munitions plant near Jersey City, New Jersey.
1965: LBJ signed the Medicare Act into law.

July 31

1498: Christopher Columbus discovered the island of Trinidad.
1912: Milton Friedman born.

Last revised January 5, 2003

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