7/1/1862 - The 1^st federal polygamy legislation was enacted.

7/1/1863 - The Civil War battle of Gettysburg began.

7/1/1898 - During the Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt & his Rough Riders waged a victorious assault on San Juan Hill in Cuba.

7/1/1943 - 'Pay-as-you-go' income tax withholding began.

7/1/1944 - Delegates from 44 countries met at Bretton Woods, NH, where they agreed to establish the International Monetary Fund & World Bank.

7/1/1946 - The US exploded a 20-kiloton atomic bomb near Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.

7/1/1963 - The US Post Office 1^st began using Zip Codes.

7/1/1968 - The US, Britain, the Soviet Union and 58 other countries signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

7/1/1991 - President GHW Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court ... and the battle began!

7/1/1997 - Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule after 156 years as a British colony.

7/2/1776 - The Continental Congress passed a resolution saying "these United Colonies are, and of right, out to be, Free and Independent States."

7/2/1926 - The US Army Air Corps began.

7/2/1962 - Ernest Hemingway, the winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize in literature, died at 62 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

7/2/1964 - President Lyndon Johnson signed a sweeping civil rights bill.

7/2/1976 - The Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was not inherently cruel or unusual.

7/2/2009 - Salvation Army Founders Day

7/3/1608 - Samuel de Champlain founded the city of Quebec.

7/3/1775 - General George Washington took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge MA.

7/3/1930 - Congress created the US Veterans Administration.

7/3/1962 - Algeria became independent after 132 years of French rule.

7/3/1971 - Jim Morrison died in Paris. The official cause of death was a heart attack.

7/3/2009 - Festival of Cerridwen - Wicca/Celtic

7/4/1776 - The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.

7/4/1802 - The US Military Academy officially opened at West Point NY.

7/4/1831 - Dr. Samuel Francis Smith, a Baptist minister in Boston, wrote America. He scribbled his original words to a melody he found in a German songbook not realizing it was the British national anthem. Hours later, the congregation of Boston's Park Street Church sang it for the 1^st time.

7/4/1826 - Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, died at Monticello VA.

7/4/1826 - John Adams died in Quincy MA.

7/4/1884 - France presented the Statue of Liberty to the US as a gift.

7/4/2009 - Happy Independence Day!

7/5/1811 - Venezuela became the 1^st South American country to declare its independence from Spain.

7/5/1865 - William Booth founded the Salvation Army in London.

7/5/1946 - The bikini made its debut during an outdoor fashion show at the Molitor Pool in Paris.

7/5/1975 - Arthur Ashe became the 1^st black man to win a Wimbledon singles title as he defeated Jimmy Connors.

7/5/1984 - The Supreme Court weakened the 70-year-old "exclusionary rule," deciding that evidence seized with defective court warrants could be used against defendants in criminal trials.

7/6/1854 - The 1^st official meeting of the Republican Party took place in Jackson MI.

7/6/1923 - The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics formed.

7/6/1933 - The 1^st All-Star baseball game took place at Chicago's Comiskey Park. The American League defeated the National League 4 to 2.

7/6/1945 - President Truman signed an executive order establishing the Medal of Freedom.

7/6/1967 - The Biafran War erupted. The war lasted over two years and claimed over 600,000 lives.

7/6/2009 - Birth of the Dalai Lama - Buddhist

7/7/1865 - Officials hanged four people in Washington for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Lincoln.

7/7/1898 - The US annexed Hawaii.

7/7/1958 - President Eisenhower signed the Alaska statehood bill.

7/7/1981 - President Reagan announced he was nominating Arizona judge Sandra Day O'Connor as the 1^st female justice on the US Supreme Court.

7/7/2009 - Asalha Puja Day (Dharma Day) - Buddhism

7/8/1663 - King Charles II of England granted a charter to Rhode Island.

7/8/1856 - Charles Barnes of Lowell, Massachusetts patented the 1^st machine gun.

7/8/1889 - The Wall Street Journal was 1^st published.

7/8/1947 - The US Army swore in its 1^st women recruits.

7/8/1950 - General Douglas MacArthur became commander-in-chief of UN forces in Korea.

7/9/1872 - John Blondell of Thomaston MN patented the doughnut cutter.

7/9/1893 - Doctors performed the 1^st successful open-heart surgery.

7/9/1896 - William Jennings Bryan delivered his famous Cross of Gold speech at the Democratic national convention in Chicago.

7/9/2009 - Martyrdom of the Bab - Baha'i

7/10/1850 - Vice President Millard Fillmore assumed the presidency following the death of President Taylor.

7/10/1919 - President Wilson personally delivered the Treaty of Versailles to the Senate and urged its ratification.

7/10/1991 - Boris Yeltsin took the oath of office as the 1^st elected president of the Russian Republic.

7/10/1992 - A federal judge in Miami sentenced former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, convicted of drug and racketeering charges, to 40 years in prison. The sentence was later cut to 10 years.

7/11/1533 - Pope Clement VII excommunicated England's King Henry XIII.

7/11/1798 - A congressional act formally reestablished the Marine Corps and created the Marine Band.

7/11/1864 - Confederate forces led by General Jubal Early began an abortive invasion of Washington DC, turning back the next day.

7/11/1977 - The Medal of Freedom was awarded posthumously to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

7/11/2009 - World Population Day

7/12/100 BC - Roman Dictator Julius Caesar was born.

7/12/1817 - Naturalist-author Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord MA.

7/12/1862 - Congress authorized the Medal of Honor.

7/12/1881 - William H. Bonney Jr., AKA Billy the Kid, was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner NM.

7/13/1960 - John Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination at his party's convention in Los Angeles.

7/13/1977 - A blackout lasting 25 hours hit the New York area. (There were a lot of kids born 9 months later!)

7/13/2009 - Ullambana (O-Bon / Festival of Souls lunar) begins – Buddhism / Shinto

7/14/1798 - Congress passed the Sedition Act making it a federal crime to publish false, scandalous or malicious writing about the US government.

7/14/1933 - The German government outlawed all political parties except the Nazi Party.

7/14/1958 - The army of Iraq overthrew the monarchy.

7/15/1606 - Dutch painter Rembrandt was born.

7/15/1870 - Georgia became the last Confederate state readmitted to the Union.

7/15/1964 - Senator Barry Goldwater won the nomination for president at the Republican national convention in San Francisco.

7/15/1998 - The Congressional Budget Office estimated federal surpluses of $1.55 trillion over the next decade. (My, how times have changed!)

7/16/1790 - The District of Columbia became the seat of the US government.

7/16/1918 - The Bolsheviks executed Russian Czar Nicholas II and his family.

7/16/1945 - The US exploded its 1^st experimental atomic bomb in the desert near Alamogordo NM.

7/16/1951 - JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye was 1^st published.

7/16/1964 - In accepting the Republican presidential nomination in San Francisco, Barry Goldwater said "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." Does anyone still believe that?

7/16/1979 - Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq.

7/17/1821 - Spain ceded Florida to the US.

7/17/1945 - President Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin & British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met at Potsdam in the final Allied summit of WWII.

7/17/2009 - Ullambana (O-Bon / Festival of Souls lunar) ends – Buddhism / Shinto

7/18/64 AD - The Great Fire of Rome began.

7/18/1947 - President Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act, which placed the speaker of the House & the Senate president pro tempore next in the line of succession after the vice president.

7/18/1969 - Ted Kennedy drove off the Dike Bridge killing Mary Jo Kopechne. He received a two month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of the accident.

7/19/1848 - A pioneer women's rights convention opened in Seneca Falls, NY.

7/19/1941 - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill launched his "V for Victory" campaign in Europe.

7/19/1969 - Apollo 11 and its astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, went into orbit around the moon.

7/19/1979 - The Nicaraguan capital of Managua fell to Sandinista guerrillas two days after President Anastasio Somoza had fled the country.

7/19/1993 - President Clinton announced a compromise allowing homosexuals to serve in the military if they refrained from all homosexual activity ... the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. It probably should have been called "don't ask, don't act."

7/19/2009 - Lailat al Miraj (The Prophet's Night Journey to Jerusalem & Ascension) - Muslim

7/20/1861 - The Congress of the Confederate States began holding sessions in Richmond VA.

7/20/1881 - Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull, a fugitive since the Battle of the Little Big Horn, surrendered to federal troops.

7/20/1942 - The 1^st detachment of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, later known as WACs, began basic training at Fort Des Moines IA.

7/20/1944 - An attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb failed.

7/20/1969 - Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the 1^st men to walk on the moon.

7/20/2009 - Moon Day

7/20/2009 - Lailat al Miraj – Muslim

7/21/1861 - The South won the 1^st Battle of Bull Run at Manassas VA.

7/21/1925 - The Monkey Trial ended in Dayton, TN with John Scopes convicted of violating state law for teaching Darwin's Theory of Evolution. The conviction was later overturned.

7/21/1949 - The US Senate ratified the North Atlantic Treaty ... which created NATO.

7/21/1954 - France surrendered North Vietnam to the Communists.

7/21/1980 - Draft registration began in the US for 19- and 20-year-old men.

7/22/1934 - Federal agents shot John Dillinger to death in Chicago.

7/22/1937 - The Senate rejected President Roosevelt's proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court.

7/22/1975 - The House joined the Senate in voting to restore the American citizenship of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

7/23/1846 - Protesting slavery and the US involvement in the Mexican War, Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his $1 poll tax and the Concord MA constable jailed him. This experience moved him to write Civil Disobedience.

7/23/1904 - Charles Menches invented the ice cream cone during the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis.

7/23/1914 - Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia for the killing of Archduke Francis Ferdinand by a Serb assassin. The dispute led to WWI.

7/23/1979 - Ayatollah Khomeini banned Rock and Roll music in Iran.

7/23/2009 - National Hotdog Day

7/23/2009 - Birthday of Haile Selassie I - Rastafarian

7/24/1929 - President Hoover proclaimed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy.

7/24/1946 - The US detonated an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in the 1^st underwater test of the device.

7/24/1974 - The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Nixon had to turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor.

7/24/2009 – Pioneer Day - LDS

7/25/1593 - France's King Henry IV converted from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism.

7/25/1946 - The US detonated an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in the 1^st underwater test of the device.

7/25/1952 - Puerto Rica became a self-governing commonwealth of the US.

7/25/2009 - Papa Ogou (St Jacques le Majeur) - Voudon

7/26/1775 - Benjamin Franklin became Postmaster-General.

7/26/1947 - President Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

7/26/1953 - Fidel Castro began his revolt against Fulgencio Batista with an unsuccessful attack on an army barracks in eastern Cuba. Castro ousted Batista in 1959.

7/26/1990 - President GHW Bush signed into law the Americans with Disabilities Act.

7/26/2009 - Parents’ Day

7/26/2009 - Gran'Dlai et Gran'Aloumandia (Sainte Anne) - Voudon

7/27/1794 - French revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre was overthrown and placed under arrest. He was executed the following day.

7/27/1953 - The Korean War armistice was signed at Panmunjom, ending three years of fighting.

7/27/1974 - The House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend President Nixon's impeachment on a charge that he had personally engaged in a course of conduct designed to obstruct justice in the Watergate case.

7/27/2009 - Korean War Veterans Armistice Day

7/28/1868 - The 14^th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing due process of law, took effect.

7/28/1945 - A US Army bomber crashed into the 79^th floor of New York's Empire State Building, killing 14 people.

7/29/1030 - The patron saint of Norway, King Olaf II, died in battle.

7/29/1890 - Artist Vincent van Gogh died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in France.

7/29/1958 - President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which created NASA.

7/29/2009 - Maitresse Silverine - Voudon

7/30/1729 - The city of Baltimore was founded.

7/30/1885 - Jean Francois Gravelet stepped out over Niagara Falls for the 1^st tightrope walk over the famous waterfall. She did it on a 3" rope stretched 1,166 feet.

7/30/1942 - President Roosevelt signed a bill creating a women's auxiliary agency in the Nave known as the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service).

7/30/1965 - President Johnson signed into law the Medicare bill ... which went into effect the following year.

7/30/2009 - Tisha B'av - Judaism

7/31/1777 - The Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old French nobleman, became a major-general in the American Continental Army.

7/31/1919 - Germany adopted its Weimar Constitution.

7/31/1991 - President GHW Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Moscow.

7/31/2009 – Lammas - Wicca/Celtic