• 180 - Twelve inhabitants of Scillium in North Africa executed for being Christians. This is the earliest record of Christianity in that part of the world.
• 1203 - Fourth Crusade captures Constantinople by assault; the Byzantine emperor Alexius III Angelus flees from his capital into exile.
• 1453 - Hundred Years' War: Battle of Castillon - The French under Jean Bureau utterly defeat the English under the Earl of Shrewsbury, who is killed in the battle in Gascony
• 1762 - Catherine II becomes tzar of Russia upon the accidental murder of Peter III of Russia.
• 1771 - Bloody Falls Massacre: Chipewyan chief Matonabbee traveling as the guide to Samuel Hearne on his Arctic overland journey, massacre a group of unsuspecting Inuit.
• 1791 - Members of the French National guard under the command of General Lafayette open fire on a crowd of radical Jacobins at the Champ de Mars, Paris, during the French Revolution, killing as many as 50 people.
• 1794 - The sixteen Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne are executed 10 days prior to the end of the French Revolution's Reign of Terror.
• 1815 - Napoleonic Wars: In France, Napoleon surrenders at Rochefort, Charente-Maritime to British forces.
• 1856 - The Great Train Wreck of 1856, occurs in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania killing over 60 people.
• 1899 - NEC Corporation is organized as the first Japanese joint venture with foreign capital.
• 1917 - King George V of the United Kingdom issues a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British royal family will bear the surname Windsor.
• 1918 - By order of the Bolshevik Party and carried out by Cheka, Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, his immediate family, and retainers were murdered at the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg, Russia.
• 1918 - RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, is sunk off Ireland by the Unterseeboot 55 with 5 lives lost.
• 1933 - After successfully crossing the Atlantic ocean, the Lithuanian research aircraft Lituanica crashes in Europe under mysterious circumstances.
• 1936 - Spanish Civil War: An Armed Forces rebellion against the recently-elected leftist Popular Front government of Spain starts the Spanish civil war.
• 1944 - Port Chicago disaster: Near the San Francisco Bay, two ships laden with ammunition for the war explode in Port Chicago, California, killing 320.
• 1944 - World War II: Napalm incendiary bombs were dropped for the first time by American P-38 pilots on a fuel depot at Coutances, near St. Lô, France
• 1945 - World War II: Potsdam Conference - At Potsdam, President Harry S. Truman, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the three main Allied leaders, begin their final summit of the war. The meeting will end on August 2.
• 1951 - Western New England College in Springfield, Massachusetts is chartered.
• 1955 - Disneyland televises its grand opening in Anaheim, California
• 1962 - Nuclear testing: The "Small Boy" test shot Little Feller I becomes the last atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada Test Site.
• 1968 - Revolution in Iraq when Abdul Rahman Arif was overthrown and the Ba'ath Party installed as the governing power in Iraq with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as the new Iraqi President.
• 1973 - King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan is deposed by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan while in Italy undergoing eye surgery.
• 1975 - Apollo-Soyuz Test Project: An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock with each other in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.
• 1976 - History of East Timor: East Timor was annexed, and became the 27th province of Indonesia.
• 1976 - The opening of the Summer Olympics is marred by 25 African teams boycotting the New Zealand team
• 1979 - Nicaraguan president General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigns and flees to Miami.
• 1981 - Hyatt Regency walkway collapse in Kansas City, Missouri killing 114 people and injuring more than 200 caused by structural failure.
• 1989 - First flight of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber.
• 1996 - Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound Boeing 747 carrying TWA flight 800 explodes, killing all 230 on board.
• 1997 - The F.W. Woolworth Company closes after 117 years in business.
• 1998 - Papua New Guinea earthquake: A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroys 10 villages in Papua New Guinea killing an estimated 3,183, leaving 2,000 more unaccounted for and thousands more homeless.
• 1998 - Biologists report in the journal Science how they sequenced the genome of the bacterium that causes syphilis, Treponema pallidum.
• 2000 - An F2 tornado ripped through Guelph, Ontario during the later portions of the evening.
• 2007 - TAM Airlines (TAM Linhas Aéreas) Flight 3054 crashed upon landing during rain in São Paulo. This is Brazil's deadliest aviation accident to date with an estimated 199 deaths.

Births