1863: The first shots are fired in the battle of Gettysburg<\/strong><\/h4>\nThe battle was the bloodiest clash of the American Civil War<\/a> and a decisive victory for General George Meade\u2019s Union forces over Robert E Lee\u2019s Confederates.<\/p>\n2 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1644: Oliver Cromwell<\/a> crushes the royalists at Marston Moor<\/strong><\/h4>\n ![\""Cromwell\"]( "\\"\"Cromwell\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Cromwell at the Battle of Marston Moor. (Picture by The Print Collector\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nPrince Rupert\u2019s royalist troops were just settling down for supper when the battle of Marston Moor<\/a> broke out. On the moorland just outside York, Rupert\u2019s army faced its Scottish and parliamentarian adversaries.<\/p>\nLike all battles, Marston Moor was an exercise in bloody chaos. While the parliamentarian right and centre struggled to make headway, the cavalry on their left wing, under Lieutenant General Oliver Cromwell, carried all before them, twice charging and driving their enemies from the field. It was a royalist catastrophe.<\/p>\n
3 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1996: The government promises to return the Stone of Scone<\/h4>\n
In the House of Commons<\/a>, British prime minister John Major<\/a> told assembled MPs that the Stone of Scone \u2013 a potent symbol of the Scottish monarchy \u2013 would be leaving English soil and returning north of the border.<\/p>\n\u201cThe Stone of Destiny,\u201d Major told parliament, \u201cholds a special place in the hearts of Scots\u2026 [and] it is appropriate to return it to its historic homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though the stone\u2019s return was considered a just move, it did throw up questions about other cultural treasures stolen from their homes by the British during the imperial years. We are still debating these questions today.<\/p>\n
4 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1862: The tale of Alice in Wonderland<\/a><\/em> is born<\/h4>\nCharles Dodgson tells a story to the daughter of his friend, Harry Lidell, with a heroine named after her \u2013 a girl called Alice. She clearly enjoyed his story that afternoon, and she begged him to write it down for her.<\/p>\n
Dodgson started work the next day. But it was not until November 1864, more than two years later, that he presented Alice with a beautifully illustrated handwritten manuscript, entitled Alice\u2019s Adventures Under Ground<\/em>. It bore a heartfelt dedication: \u201cA Christmas Gift to a Dear Child in Memory of a Summer\u2019s Day.\u201d<\/p>\n5 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1948: The NHS<\/a> is launched<\/h4>\n ![\""Aneurin\"]( "\\"\"Aneurin\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health, meeting a patient at Papworth Village Hospital. This centre for tubercular cases was taken over by the National Health Service the following July 5th. (Picture by Edward G Malindine\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nThe public uptake was overwhelming. Despite warnings by postwar prime minister Clement Attlee<\/a> that there were \u201cbound to be early difficulties with staff, accommodation and so on\u201d, 94 per cent of the population had registered as NHS patients by the day of the launch. On 5 July, when the service officially opened, 2,751 British hospitals \u2013 plus doctors\u2019 surgeries, dentists and opticians \u2013 were part of the NHS. Today, the service treats millions of people each year.<\/p>\n6 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1885: Louis Pasteur unveils his cure for rabies<\/h4>\n
When nine-year-old Joseph Meister was bitten by a rabid dog, his parents feared the worst. Rabies was a death sentence. But Joseph\u2019s mother had recently read about the work of the pioneering microbiologist Louis Pasteur. Pasteur did have a rabies vaccine, developed by his colleague Emile Roux, but it had only ever been tested on dogs. The problem, however, was that since he was not a registered doctor, Pasteur would be breaking the law if he tried to treat Joseph.<\/p>\n
To his eternal credit, Pasteur decided to gamble. \u201cThe death of this child appearing to be inevitable,\u201d he wrote later, \u201cI decided, not without lively and sore anxiety, as may well be believed, to try.\u201d This was the chance to test the vaccine: \u201cHalf a syringeful of the spinal cord of a rabbit, which had died of rabies.\u201d Over the next few days, he injected little Joseph some 13 times. On the final day he gave him \u201cthe most virulent dose of rabies\u201d.<\/p>\n
It worked. Joseph was cured. Forever indebted to Professor Pasteur, he later became the caretaker of the Pasteur Institute in Paris.<\/p>\n Famous births in July<\/h2>\n1 July 1961<\/h6>\n
Diana Frances Spencer, the youngest daughter of the future 8th Earl Spencer and his first wife, Frances<\/p>\n
2 July 1862<\/h6>\n
William Henry Bragg, English physicist\u00a0<\/p>\n
3 July 1883<\/h6>\n
Franz Kafka, writer<\/p>\n
5 July 1810<\/h6>\n
PT Barnum, American showman, businessman and politician<\/p>\n
8 July 1621\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Jean de la Fontaine, French poet and fabulist<\/p>\n
8 July 1640<\/h6>\n
Henry, Duke of Gloucester<\/p>\n
13 July 1811<\/h6>\n
George Gilbert Scott, one of the leading Gothic Revival architects of Victorian Britain<\/p>\n
14 July 1862\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Gustav Klimt, Austrian symbolist painter\u00a0<\/p>\n
15 July 1811\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Emily Stackhouse, botanical artist<\/p>\n
17 July 1920\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Kenneth \u201cthey think it\u2019s all over\u201d Wolstenholme, wartime bomber pilot<\/p>\n
18 July 1811\u00a0<\/h6>\n
William Makepeace Thackeray, English author<\/p>\n
20 July 1860<\/h6>\n
Margaret McMillan, pioneer of nursery education<\/p>\n
21 July 1832\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Henrietta King, rancher and philanthropist<\/p>\n
22 July 1210\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Joan, the eldest daughter of King John<\/p>\n
23 July 1883\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Alan Francis Brooke, a distinguished soldier and chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1941\u00a0<\/p>\n
25 July 1920<\/h6>\n
Rosalind Franklin, scientist who played an important role in the discovery of the double helix form of DNA<\/p>\n
27 July 1452<\/h6>\n
Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan and patron of Leonardo da Vinci<\/p>\n
28 July 1902\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Karl Popper, philosopher<\/p>\n
29 July 1763\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Philip Charles Durham, Scottish admiral<\/p>\n
30 July 1511\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Giorgio Vasari, painter, architect and historian<\/p>\n
30 July 1863\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Henry Ford, the American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
7 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1456: Joan of Arc is posthumously acquitted of her crimes<\/h4>\n ![\""Joan\"]( "\\"\"Joan\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII in the Cathedral at Reims. (Picture by Universal History Archive\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nA quarter of a century after she had been burned at the stake for heresy, Joan of Arc was back in court. It was the summer of 1456, and Pope Callixtus III had authorised a retrial to investigate whether the saviour of Orl\u00e9ans had been unjustly convicted.<\/p>\n
The court had decided, said the archbishop of Reims, that the original \u201ctrial and sentence, being filled with fraud, false charges, injustice, contradiction, and manifest errors concerning both fact and law\u201d should be considered \u201cnull, without effect, void, and of no consequence\u201d. It was clear, he said, that \u201cJoan did not contract any taint of infamy and that she shall be and is washed clean of such.\u201d<\/p>\n
8 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1822: Percy Shelley drowns in a boat off Italy<\/h4>\n
Shelley was sailing the Don Juan<\/em> back from Livorno to Lerici with his friend Edward Williams and a boat boy, Charles Vivian, when a violent summer storm sprang up.<\/p>\nShelley reportedly had just enough time to cram a collection of John Keats\u2019 poems into his back pocket before he was swallowed by the turbulent sea. A poor swimmer, he stood no chance; indeed, all three men aboard the Don Juan<\/em> were lost. Their bodies, identifiable only by their clothing, washed ashore 10 days after the storm.<\/p>\n9 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1877: The world\u2019s first tennis tournament opens at the All England Club, Wimbledon<\/a><\/h4>\nThe title was won by Spencer Gore.<\/p>\n
10 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1962: The Telstar communications satellite is launched<\/h4>\n
It was launched aboard a Delta rocket at Cape Canaveral. Telstar made possible the transatlantic transmission of live television images and was the inspiration for a hit record by The Tornados.<\/p>\n
11 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1960: Harper Lee publishes her debut novel, To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em><\/h4>\n ![\""Harper\"]( "\\"\"Harper\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Harper Lee smiles before receiving the 2007 Presidential Medal of Freedom in the East Room of the White House November. (Picture by Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nBy the time the Hollywood adaptation appeared in 1962, Lee was a household name, feted as the writer who, perhaps more than any other, had persuaded white Middle America to face the harsh reality of racial prejudice.<\/p>\n
12 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1543: Katherine Parr<\/a> became the sixth consort of Henry VIII<\/a><\/h4>\nShe married the ageing king in the queen\u2019s closet at Hampton Court Palace with 18 people in attendance.<\/p>\n
13 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1793: Jean-Paul Marat, a fervent supporter of the French Revolution<\/a>, is stabbed to death in his bathtub by Girondin sympathiser Charlotte Corday<\/h4>\nThe daughter of royalist parents, Corday had seen her brothers flee abroad and had reportedly been inspired by the rhetoric of the more moderate Girondin faction. She pulled from her corset a five-inch kitchen knife, and plunged it deep into Marat\u2019s chest. \u201cHelp me, my dear!\u201d Marat screamed at his wife. But it was already too late; as blood gushed from the wound, he was dead within moments.<\/p>\n
14 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1789: Mobs storm the Bastille<\/a>, and the symbol of Parisian royal oppression is brought to its knees<\/h4>\nBernard-Ren\u00e9 de Launay was not a bad man. Born in 1740, he had spent much of his career in the French Guards, stationed in Paris, before becoming, like his father before him, the governor of the vast state prison in the centre of the capital. Contrary to what was claimed in political pamphlets of the day, the Bastille was not really such a terrible place. De Launay himself had a reputation as a reasonably considerate gaoler, and far from being stuffed with political dissidents, the Bastille was actually pretty empty. On the morning of 14 July 1789, in fact, de Launay was in charge of only seven prisoners \u2013 four forgers, two madmen and a dissolute aristocrat.<\/p>\n
To the Paris mob, however, the Bastille was a time-honoured symbol of royal oppression. With France in the grip of a severe economic crisis, bread prices soaring, the political system deadlocked and the streets full of hysterical rumours, it was perhaps only a matter of time before the demonstrators attacked the prison. On the morning of the 14th they struck, demanding that de Launay surrender the keys and hand over all arms and artillery. At around lunchtime, they broke through into the outer courtyard. Shots were fired; the mood turned ever uglier. By 5.30 that afternoon, the fortress had fallen.<\/p>\n
15 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1099: Jerusalem falls to the crusaders<\/a><\/h4>\nLaunched in November 1095, the First Crusade reached its climax at the walls of Jerusalem nearly four years later. It was the height of summer, and outside the walls of the holy city, some 12,000 crusaders were preparing for the final assault. On the night of 14 July, the crusaders attacked from two siege towers. At the city\u2019s north-eastern gate, two knights from Tournai led the charge, soon followed by scores more. And as the resistance crumbled, the blood began to flow.<\/p>\n
16 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1945: The US tests its atomic bomb<\/a><\/h4>\nIt was almost 5.30am on 16 July 1945, in the dawn heat of the New Mexico desert, when the bomb exploded.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was staring straight ahead with my open left eye covered by a welder\u2019s glass and my right eye remaining open and uncovered,\u201d recalled one observer, Ralph Carlisle Smith, who was watching from a nearby hilltop. \u201cSuddenly, my right eye was blinded by a light which appeared instantaneously all about without any build up of intensity. My left eye could see the ball of fire start up like a tremendous bubble\u2026 It turned yellow, then red, and then beautiful purple.\u201d<\/p>\n
17 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1955: Disneyland<\/a> opens to the world<\/h4>\nOn 17 July 1955 in Anaheim, California, Walt Disney welcomed Americans into his very own Garden of Eden. \u201cTo all who come to this happy place, welcome,\u201d he proclaimed.<\/p>\n
![\""Julie\"]( "\\"\"Julie\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Julie Andrews performs in front of Prince Charming Regal Carrousel in the Magic Kingdom, Florida. (Picture by: NBC\/NBCU Photo Bank)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n18 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1976: Olympic gymnast Nadia Coma\u0306neci makes history with her faultless routine<\/h4>\n
Romanian gymnast Nadia Coma\u0306neci won the first ever perfect 10 for her routine on the uneven bars. The scoreboard flashed up \u201c1.00\u201d, the nearest it could get to a 10. Then she did it again \u2013 and again, and again, six times in all.<\/p>\n
19 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1848: The world\u2019s first women\u2019s rights convention demands equality<\/h4>\n
The tiny village of Seneca Falls, New York has an extraordinary claim to fame. It was here that the world\u2019s first convention on women\u2019s rights opened on 19 July 1848 \u2013 a two-day meeting that became one of the foundational events of the international feminist movement.<\/p>\n Famous deaths in July<\/h2>\n2 July 1743<\/h6>\n
Spencer Compton, Britain\u2019s second prime minister<\/p>\n
2 July 1961<\/h6>\n
Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize-winning author<\/p>\n
5 July 1913<\/h6>\n
Alfred Lyttelton, former colonial secretary<\/p>\n
6 July 1960<\/h6>\n
Aneurin \u2018Nye\u2019 Bevan, Welsh Labour politician and architect of the National Health Service<\/p>\n
7 July 1661<\/h6>\n
George Fox, Quaker, writer, preacher and former Parliamentarian soldier<\/p>\n
10 July 138<\/h6>\n
Hadrian, Roman emperor\u00a0<\/p>\n
16 July 1960\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Albert Kesselring, German Second World War field marshal<\/p>\n
20 July 1332<\/h6>\n
Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray<\/p>\n
24 July 1862\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Martin van Buren, the eighth president of the United States<\/p>\n
26 July 1680<\/h6>\n
John Wilmot, Restoration poet, courtier and rake<\/p>\n
29 July 1890\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Vincent Van Gogh, post- impressionist painter<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
20 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1923: Former Mexican revolutionary leader Jos\u00e9 Doroteo Arango Ar\u00e1mbula, better known as Pancho Villa, is assassinated while driving in his car through the town of Parral, Chihuahua<\/h4>\n21 July<\/a><\/h2>\n356 BC: The Temple of Artemis burns to the ground<\/h4>\n
For the people of Ephesus, the Temple of Artemis was a source of immense local pride. Reportedly built by the extraordinarily rich king Croesus, it was said to have been made largely of marble, boasting huge pillars. For visitors, there were few better attractions in the Greek world. Pilgrims brought jewellery as a gift for the goddess; refugees came to seek sanctuary.<\/p>\n
- Read more | The gods and their whims: your guide to ancient Greek religion<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
But on 21 July 356, disaster struck. The man responsible was one Herostratus, who may have been an outsider or a slave. Supposedly hungry for fame, he decided to set the temple\u2019s wooden rafters alight, \u201cso that through the destruction of this most beautiful building his name might be spread through the whole world\u201d.<\/p>\n
The result was a tragedy. In the space of a single night, the temple was consumed by flames, and by morning it was a blackened, broken ruin.<\/p>\n
22 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1209: French crusaders slay thousands in the name of God<\/h4>\n
The Albigensian Crusade, which began in 1209, was one of the most blood- stained pages in medieval European history. At its heart was Pope Innocent III\u2019s desire to stamp out the Cathar heresy \u2013 a form of Christianity condemned by the Catholic church \u2013 as well as the French king Philip II\u2019s eagerness to crush the semi-detached County of Toulouse. But the victims, whose voices have largely been lost to history, were the people of the Languedoc, southern France, who found themselves facing a French royal army determined to take no prisoners.<\/p>\n
23 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1903: In Chicago, Dr Ernst Pfenning becomes the first man to buy a Ford motor car, spending less than $1,000 on a Model A.<\/h4>\n24 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1911: In the jungles of Peru, the American explorer and amateur archaeologist Hiram Bingham comes across the site of Machu Picchu<\/a>, then virtually unknown in the outside world.<\/h4>\n25 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1978: World\u2019s first IVF baby is born<\/h4>\n ![\""Louise\"]( "\\"\"Louise\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Louise Brown and her parents Lesley and John Brown at their home in Bristol. (Picture by Kent Gavin\/Mirrorpix\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nShortly before midnight on 25 July, Lesley Brown gave birth to her daughter Louise \u2013 then widely described as the world\u2019s first \u2018test tube baby\u2019.<\/p>\n
For the Brown family, that moment on 25 July was of course one of unutterable joy. But letters poured in from across the world, many of them downright abusive. One parcel from California contained a series of letters covered in red liquid, a broken glass test tube and a plastic foetus.<\/p>\n
Still, there were messages of support, too. \u201cI fear that you will find yourselves on the receiving end of all the usual criticism and condemnation that follows any medical breakthrough, so am writing to try in a tiny way to even things up,\u201d read one letter, sent all the way from Australia.<\/p>\n
26 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1745: Gosden Common near Guildford hosts the first recorded women\u2019s cricket match<\/h4>\n
Between the villages of Bramley and Hambledon, with both sides dressed in cricketing whites and sporting blue and red ribbons in their hair.<\/p>\n
27 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1953: The United Nations, North Korea and China signed an armistice to bring about a ceasefire in the Korean War. However, no peace treaty was ever signed.<\/h4>\n28 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1540: Henry VIII marries wife number five<\/h4>\n
As Thomas Cromwell<\/a> was being taken to the scaffold for his execution, the Duke of Norfolk\u2019s pretty teenage niece was dressing for the most important day of her life. Only a few days earlier, the king had secured an annulment of his marriage to Anne of Cleves<\/a>, and his eye had already fallen on Catherine<\/a> as her replacement. It was apparently love \u2013 or lust \u2013 at first sight, at least for Henry.<\/p>\nDid Catherine know that, even as she was repeating her marriage vows at Surrey\u2019s Oatlands Palace, Cromwell\u2019s freshly severed head was rotting on a spike? We will never know. What we do know, though, is that her 49-year-old husband seemed aflame with passion, since reports suggest he could barely keep his hands off her.<\/p>\n
29 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1981: Prince Charles<\/a> marries Lady Diana Spencer<\/a><\/h4>\n
2 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1644: Oliver Cromwell<\/a> crushes the royalists at Marston Moor<\/strong><\/h4>\n ![\""Cromwell\"]( "\\"\"Cromwell\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Cromwell at the Battle of Marston Moor. (Picture by The Print Collector\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nPrince Rupert\u2019s royalist troops were just settling down for supper when the battle of Marston Moor<\/a> broke out. On the moorland just outside York, Rupert\u2019s army faced its Scottish and parliamentarian adversaries.<\/p>\nLike all battles, Marston Moor was an exercise in bloody chaos. While the parliamentarian right and centre struggled to make headway, the cavalry on their left wing, under Lieutenant General Oliver Cromwell, carried all before them, twice charging and driving their enemies from the field. It was a royalist catastrophe.<\/p>\n
3 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1996: The government promises to return the Stone of Scone<\/h4>\n
In the House of Commons<\/a>, British prime minister John Major<\/a> told assembled MPs that the Stone of Scone \u2013 a potent symbol of the Scottish monarchy \u2013 would be leaving English soil and returning north of the border.<\/p>\n\u201cThe Stone of Destiny,\u201d Major told parliament, \u201cholds a special place in the hearts of Scots\u2026 [and] it is appropriate to return it to its historic homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though the stone\u2019s return was considered a just move, it did throw up questions about other cultural treasures stolen from their homes by the British during the imperial years. We are still debating these questions today.<\/p>\n
4 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1862: The tale of Alice in Wonderland<\/a><\/em> is born<\/h4>\nCharles Dodgson tells a story to the daughter of his friend, Harry Lidell, with a heroine named after her \u2013 a girl called Alice. She clearly enjoyed his story that afternoon, and she begged him to write it down for her.<\/p>\n
Dodgson started work the next day. But it was not until November 1864, more than two years later, that he presented Alice with a beautifully illustrated handwritten manuscript, entitled Alice\u2019s Adventures Under Ground<\/em>. It bore a heartfelt dedication: \u201cA Christmas Gift to a Dear Child in Memory of a Summer\u2019s Day.\u201d<\/p>\n5 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1948: The NHS<\/a> is launched<\/h4>\n ![\""Aneurin\"]( "\\"\"Aneurin\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health, meeting a patient at Papworth Village Hospital. This centre for tubercular cases was taken over by the National Health Service the following July 5th. (Picture by Edward G Malindine\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nThe public uptake was overwhelming. Despite warnings by postwar prime minister Clement Attlee<\/a> that there were \u201cbound to be early difficulties with staff, accommodation and so on\u201d, 94 per cent of the population had registered as NHS patients by the day of the launch. On 5 July, when the service officially opened, 2,751 British hospitals \u2013 plus doctors\u2019 surgeries, dentists and opticians \u2013 were part of the NHS. Today, the service treats millions of people each year.<\/p>\n6 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1885: Louis Pasteur unveils his cure for rabies<\/h4>\n
When nine-year-old Joseph Meister was bitten by a rabid dog, his parents feared the worst. Rabies was a death sentence. But Joseph\u2019s mother had recently read about the work of the pioneering microbiologist Louis Pasteur. Pasteur did have a rabies vaccine, developed by his colleague Emile Roux, but it had only ever been tested on dogs. The problem, however, was that since he was not a registered doctor, Pasteur would be breaking the law if he tried to treat Joseph.<\/p>\n
To his eternal credit, Pasteur decided to gamble. \u201cThe death of this child appearing to be inevitable,\u201d he wrote later, \u201cI decided, not without lively and sore anxiety, as may well be believed, to try.\u201d This was the chance to test the vaccine: \u201cHalf a syringeful of the spinal cord of a rabbit, which had died of rabies.\u201d Over the next few days, he injected little Joseph some 13 times. On the final day he gave him \u201cthe most virulent dose of rabies\u201d.<\/p>\n
It worked. Joseph was cured. Forever indebted to Professor Pasteur, he later became the caretaker of the Pasteur Institute in Paris.<\/p>\n Famous births in July<\/h2>\n1 July 1961<\/h6>\n
Diana Frances Spencer, the youngest daughter of the future 8th Earl Spencer and his first wife, Frances<\/p>\n
2 July 1862<\/h6>\n
William Henry Bragg, English physicist\u00a0<\/p>\n
3 July 1883<\/h6>\n
Franz Kafka, writer<\/p>\n
5 July 1810<\/h6>\n
PT Barnum, American showman, businessman and politician<\/p>\n
8 July 1621\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Jean de la Fontaine, French poet and fabulist<\/p>\n
8 July 1640<\/h6>\n
Henry, Duke of Gloucester<\/p>\n
13 July 1811<\/h6>\n
George Gilbert Scott, one of the leading Gothic Revival architects of Victorian Britain<\/p>\n
14 July 1862\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Gustav Klimt, Austrian symbolist painter\u00a0<\/p>\n
15 July 1811\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Emily Stackhouse, botanical artist<\/p>\n
17 July 1920\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Kenneth \u201cthey think it\u2019s all over\u201d Wolstenholme, wartime bomber pilot<\/p>\n
18 July 1811\u00a0<\/h6>\n
William Makepeace Thackeray, English author<\/p>\n
20 July 1860<\/h6>\n
Margaret McMillan, pioneer of nursery education<\/p>\n
21 July 1832\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Henrietta King, rancher and philanthropist<\/p>\n
22 July 1210\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Joan, the eldest daughter of King John<\/p>\n
23 July 1883\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Alan Francis Brooke, a distinguished soldier and chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1941\u00a0<\/p>\n
25 July 1920<\/h6>\n
Rosalind Franklin, scientist who played an important role in the discovery of the double helix form of DNA<\/p>\n
27 July 1452<\/h6>\n
Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan and patron of Leonardo da Vinci<\/p>\n
28 July 1902\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Karl Popper, philosopher<\/p>\n
29 July 1763\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Philip Charles Durham, Scottish admiral<\/p>\n
30 July 1511\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Giorgio Vasari, painter, architect and historian<\/p>\n
30 July 1863\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Henry Ford, the American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
7 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1456: Joan of Arc is posthumously acquitted of her crimes<\/h4>\n ![\""Joan\"]( "\\"\"Joan\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII in the Cathedral at Reims. (Picture by Universal History Archive\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nA quarter of a century after she had been burned at the stake for heresy, Joan of Arc was back in court. It was the summer of 1456, and Pope Callixtus III had authorised a retrial to investigate whether the saviour of Orl\u00e9ans had been unjustly convicted.<\/p>\n
The court had decided, said the archbishop of Reims, that the original \u201ctrial and sentence, being filled with fraud, false charges, injustice, contradiction, and manifest errors concerning both fact and law\u201d should be considered \u201cnull, without effect, void, and of no consequence\u201d. It was clear, he said, that \u201cJoan did not contract any taint of infamy and that she shall be and is washed clean of such.\u201d<\/p>\n
8 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1822: Percy Shelley drowns in a boat off Italy<\/h4>\n
Shelley was sailing the Don Juan<\/em> back from Livorno to Lerici with his friend Edward Williams and a boat boy, Charles Vivian, when a violent summer storm sprang up.<\/p>\nShelley reportedly had just enough time to cram a collection of John Keats\u2019 poems into his back pocket before he was swallowed by the turbulent sea. A poor swimmer, he stood no chance; indeed, all three men aboard the Don Juan<\/em> were lost. Their bodies, identifiable only by their clothing, washed ashore 10 days after the storm.<\/p>\n9 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1877: The world\u2019s first tennis tournament opens at the All England Club, Wimbledon<\/a><\/h4>\nThe title was won by Spencer Gore.<\/p>\n
10 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1962: The Telstar communications satellite is launched<\/h4>\n
It was launched aboard a Delta rocket at Cape Canaveral. Telstar made possible the transatlantic transmission of live television images and was the inspiration for a hit record by The Tornados.<\/p>\n
11 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1960: Harper Lee publishes her debut novel, To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em><\/h4>\n ![\""Harper\"]( "\\"\"Harper\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Harper Lee smiles before receiving the 2007 Presidential Medal of Freedom in the East Room of the White House November. (Picture by Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nBy the time the Hollywood adaptation appeared in 1962, Lee was a household name, feted as the writer who, perhaps more than any other, had persuaded white Middle America to face the harsh reality of racial prejudice.<\/p>\n
12 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1543: Katherine Parr<\/a> became the sixth consort of Henry VIII<\/a><\/h4>\nShe married the ageing king in the queen\u2019s closet at Hampton Court Palace with 18 people in attendance.<\/p>\n
13 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1793: Jean-Paul Marat, a fervent supporter of the French Revolution<\/a>, is stabbed to death in his bathtub by Girondin sympathiser Charlotte Corday<\/h4>\nThe daughter of royalist parents, Corday had seen her brothers flee abroad and had reportedly been inspired by the rhetoric of the more moderate Girondin faction. She pulled from her corset a five-inch kitchen knife, and plunged it deep into Marat\u2019s chest. \u201cHelp me, my dear!\u201d Marat screamed at his wife. But it was already too late; as blood gushed from the wound, he was dead within moments.<\/p>\n
14 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1789: Mobs storm the Bastille<\/a>, and the symbol of Parisian royal oppression is brought to its knees<\/h4>\nBernard-Ren\u00e9 de Launay was not a bad man. Born in 1740, he had spent much of his career in the French Guards, stationed in Paris, before becoming, like his father before him, the governor of the vast state prison in the centre of the capital. Contrary to what was claimed in political pamphlets of the day, the Bastille was not really such a terrible place. De Launay himself had a reputation as a reasonably considerate gaoler, and far from being stuffed with political dissidents, the Bastille was actually pretty empty. On the morning of 14 July 1789, in fact, de Launay was in charge of only seven prisoners \u2013 four forgers, two madmen and a dissolute aristocrat.<\/p>\n
To the Paris mob, however, the Bastille was a time-honoured symbol of royal oppression. With France in the grip of a severe economic crisis, bread prices soaring, the political system deadlocked and the streets full of hysterical rumours, it was perhaps only a matter of time before the demonstrators attacked the prison. On the morning of the 14th they struck, demanding that de Launay surrender the keys and hand over all arms and artillery. At around lunchtime, they broke through into the outer courtyard. Shots were fired; the mood turned ever uglier. By 5.30 that afternoon, the fortress had fallen.<\/p>\n
15 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1099: Jerusalem falls to the crusaders<\/a><\/h4>\nLaunched in November 1095, the First Crusade reached its climax at the walls of Jerusalem nearly four years later. It was the height of summer, and outside the walls of the holy city, some 12,000 crusaders were preparing for the final assault. On the night of 14 July, the crusaders attacked from two siege towers. At the city\u2019s north-eastern gate, two knights from Tournai led the charge, soon followed by scores more. And as the resistance crumbled, the blood began to flow.<\/p>\n
16 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1945: The US tests its atomic bomb<\/a><\/h4>\nIt was almost 5.30am on 16 July 1945, in the dawn heat of the New Mexico desert, when the bomb exploded.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was staring straight ahead with my open left eye covered by a welder\u2019s glass and my right eye remaining open and uncovered,\u201d recalled one observer, Ralph Carlisle Smith, who was watching from a nearby hilltop. \u201cSuddenly, my right eye was blinded by a light which appeared instantaneously all about without any build up of intensity. My left eye could see the ball of fire start up like a tremendous bubble\u2026 It turned yellow, then red, and then beautiful purple.\u201d<\/p>\n
17 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1955: Disneyland<\/a> opens to the world<\/h4>\nOn 17 July 1955 in Anaheim, California, Walt Disney welcomed Americans into his very own Garden of Eden. \u201cTo all who come to this happy place, welcome,\u201d he proclaimed.<\/p>\n
![\""Julie\"]( "\\"\"Julie\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Julie Andrews performs in front of Prince Charming Regal Carrousel in the Magic Kingdom, Florida. (Picture by: NBC\/NBCU Photo Bank)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n18 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1976: Olympic gymnast Nadia Coma\u0306neci makes history with her faultless routine<\/h4>\n
Romanian gymnast Nadia Coma\u0306neci won the first ever perfect 10 for her routine on the uneven bars. The scoreboard flashed up \u201c1.00\u201d, the nearest it could get to a 10. Then she did it again \u2013 and again, and again, six times in all.<\/p>\n
19 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1848: The world\u2019s first women\u2019s rights convention demands equality<\/h4>\n
The tiny village of Seneca Falls, New York has an extraordinary claim to fame. It was here that the world\u2019s first convention on women\u2019s rights opened on 19 July 1848 \u2013 a two-day meeting that became one of the foundational events of the international feminist movement.<\/p>\n Famous deaths in July<\/h2>\n2 July 1743<\/h6>\n
Spencer Compton, Britain\u2019s second prime minister<\/p>\n
2 July 1961<\/h6>\n
Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize-winning author<\/p>\n
5 July 1913<\/h6>\n
Alfred Lyttelton, former colonial secretary<\/p>\n
6 July 1960<\/h6>\n
Aneurin \u2018Nye\u2019 Bevan, Welsh Labour politician and architect of the National Health Service<\/p>\n
7 July 1661<\/h6>\n
George Fox, Quaker, writer, preacher and former Parliamentarian soldier<\/p>\n
10 July 138<\/h6>\n
Hadrian, Roman emperor\u00a0<\/p>\n
16 July 1960\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Albert Kesselring, German Second World War field marshal<\/p>\n
20 July 1332<\/h6>\n
Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray<\/p>\n
24 July 1862\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Martin van Buren, the eighth president of the United States<\/p>\n
26 July 1680<\/h6>\n
John Wilmot, Restoration poet, courtier and rake<\/p>\n
29 July 1890\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Vincent Van Gogh, post- impressionist painter<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
20 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1923: Former Mexican revolutionary leader Jos\u00e9 Doroteo Arango Ar\u00e1mbula, better known as Pancho Villa, is assassinated while driving in his car through the town of Parral, Chihuahua<\/h4>\n21 July<\/a><\/h2>\n356 BC: The Temple of Artemis burns to the ground<\/h4>\n
For the people of Ephesus, the Temple of Artemis was a source of immense local pride. Reportedly built by the extraordinarily rich king Croesus, it was said to have been made largely of marble, boasting huge pillars. For visitors, there were few better attractions in the Greek world. Pilgrims brought jewellery as a gift for the goddess; refugees came to seek sanctuary.<\/p>\n
- Read more | The gods and their whims: your guide to ancient Greek religion<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
But on 21 July 356, disaster struck. The man responsible was one Herostratus, who may have been an outsider or a slave. Supposedly hungry for fame, he decided to set the temple\u2019s wooden rafters alight, \u201cso that through the destruction of this most beautiful building his name might be spread through the whole world\u201d.<\/p>\n
The result was a tragedy. In the space of a single night, the temple was consumed by flames, and by morning it was a blackened, broken ruin.<\/p>\n
22 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1209: French crusaders slay thousands in the name of God<\/h4>\n
The Albigensian Crusade, which began in 1209, was one of the most blood- stained pages in medieval European history. At its heart was Pope Innocent III\u2019s desire to stamp out the Cathar heresy \u2013 a form of Christianity condemned by the Catholic church \u2013 as well as the French king Philip II\u2019s eagerness to crush the semi-detached County of Toulouse. But the victims, whose voices have largely been lost to history, were the people of the Languedoc, southern France, who found themselves facing a French royal army determined to take no prisoners.<\/p>\n
23 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1903: In Chicago, Dr Ernst Pfenning becomes the first man to buy a Ford motor car, spending less than $1,000 on a Model A.<\/h4>\n24 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1911: In the jungles of Peru, the American explorer and amateur archaeologist Hiram Bingham comes across the site of Machu Picchu<\/a>, then virtually unknown in the outside world.<\/h4>\n25 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1978: World\u2019s first IVF baby is born<\/h4>\n ![\""Louise\"]( "\\"\"Louise\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Louise Brown and her parents Lesley and John Brown at their home in Bristol. (Picture by Kent Gavin\/Mirrorpix\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nShortly before midnight on 25 July, Lesley Brown gave birth to her daughter Louise \u2013 then widely described as the world\u2019s first \u2018test tube baby\u2019.<\/p>\n
For the Brown family, that moment on 25 July was of course one of unutterable joy. But letters poured in from across the world, many of them downright abusive. One parcel from California contained a series of letters covered in red liquid, a broken glass test tube and a plastic foetus.<\/p>\n
Still, there were messages of support, too. \u201cI fear that you will find yourselves on the receiving end of all the usual criticism and condemnation that follows any medical breakthrough, so am writing to try in a tiny way to even things up,\u201d read one letter, sent all the way from Australia.<\/p>\n
26 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1745: Gosden Common near Guildford hosts the first recorded women\u2019s cricket match<\/h4>\n
Between the villages of Bramley and Hambledon, with both sides dressed in cricketing whites and sporting blue and red ribbons in their hair.<\/p>\n
27 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1953: The United Nations, North Korea and China signed an armistice to bring about a ceasefire in the Korean War. However, no peace treaty was ever signed.<\/h4>\n28 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1540: Henry VIII marries wife number five<\/h4>\n
As Thomas Cromwell<\/a> was being taken to the scaffold for his execution, the Duke of Norfolk\u2019s pretty teenage niece was dressing for the most important day of her life. Only a few days earlier, the king had secured an annulment of his marriage to Anne of Cleves<\/a>, and his eye had already fallen on Catherine<\/a> as her replacement. It was apparently love \u2013 or lust \u2013 at first sight, at least for Henry.<\/p>\nDid Catherine know that, even as she was repeating her marriage vows at Surrey\u2019s Oatlands Palace, Cromwell\u2019s freshly severed head was rotting on a spike? We will never know. What we do know, though, is that her 49-year-old husband seemed aflame with passion, since reports suggest he could barely keep his hands off her.<\/p>\n
29 July<\/a><\/h2>\n1981: Prince Charles<\/a> marries Lady Diana Spencer<\/a><\/h4>\n
![\""Cromwell\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/06\/GettyImages-918908934-0f83f78-e1687967144943.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C412"\" "\\"\"Cromwell\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Prince Rupert\u2019s royalist troops were just settling down for supper when the battle of Marston Moor<\/a> broke out. On the moorland just outside York, Rupert\u2019s army faced its Scottish and parliamentarian adversaries.<\/p>\n Like all battles, Marston Moor was an exercise in bloody chaos. While the parliamentarian right and centre struggled to make headway, the cavalry on their left wing, under Lieutenant General Oliver Cromwell, carried all before them, twice charging and driving their enemies from the field. It was a royalist catastrophe.<\/p>\n In the House of Commons<\/a>, British prime minister John Major<\/a> told assembled MPs that the Stone of Scone \u2013 a potent symbol of the Scottish monarchy \u2013 would be leaving English soil and returning north of the border.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Stone of Destiny,\u201d Major told parliament, \u201cholds a special place in the hearts of Scots\u2026 [and] it is appropriate to return it to its historic homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n Though the stone\u2019s return was considered a just move, it did throw up questions about other cultural treasures stolen from their homes by the British during the imperial years. We are still debating these questions today.<\/p>\n Charles Dodgson tells a story to the daughter of his friend, Harry Lidell, with a heroine named after her \u2013 a girl called Alice. She clearly enjoyed his story that afternoon, and she begged him to write it down for her.<\/p>\n Dodgson started work the next day. But it was not until November 1864, more than two years later, that he presented Alice with a beautifully illustrated handwritten manuscript, entitled Alice\u2019s Adventures Under Ground<\/em>. It bore a heartfelt dedication: \u201cA Christmas Gift to a Dear Child in Memory of a Summer\u2019s Day.\u201d<\/p>\n The public uptake was overwhelming. Despite warnings by postwar prime minister Clement Attlee<\/a> that there were \u201cbound to be early difficulties with staff, accommodation and so on\u201d, 94 per cent of the population had registered as NHS patients by the day of the launch. On 5 July, when the service officially opened, 2,751 British hospitals \u2013 plus doctors\u2019 surgeries, dentists and opticians \u2013 were part of the NHS. Today, the service treats millions of people each year.<\/p>\n When nine-year-old Joseph Meister was bitten by a rabid dog, his parents feared the worst. Rabies was a death sentence. But Joseph\u2019s mother had recently read about the work of the pioneering microbiologist Louis Pasteur. Pasteur did have a rabies vaccine, developed by his colleague Emile Roux, but it had only ever been tested on dogs. The problem, however, was that since he was not a registered doctor, Pasteur would be breaking the law if he tried to treat Joseph.<\/p>\n To his eternal credit, Pasteur decided to gamble. \u201cThe death of this child appearing to be inevitable,\u201d he wrote later, \u201cI decided, not without lively and sore anxiety, as may well be believed, to try.\u201d This was the chance to test the vaccine: \u201cHalf a syringeful of the spinal cord of a rabbit, which had died of rabies.\u201d Over the next few days, he injected little Joseph some 13 times. On the final day he gave him \u201cthe most virulent dose of rabies\u201d.<\/p>\n It worked. Joseph was cured. Forever indebted to Professor Pasteur, he later became the caretaker of the Pasteur Institute in Paris.<\/p>\n Diana Frances Spencer, the youngest daughter of the future 8th Earl Spencer and his first wife, Frances<\/p>\n William Henry Bragg, English physicist\u00a0<\/p>\n Franz Kafka, writer<\/p>\n PT Barnum, American showman, businessman and politician<\/p>\n Jean de la Fontaine, French poet and fabulist<\/p>\n Henry, Duke of Gloucester<\/p>\n George Gilbert Scott, one of the leading Gothic Revival architects of Victorian Britain<\/p>\n Gustav Klimt, Austrian symbolist painter\u00a0<\/p>\n Emily Stackhouse, botanical artist<\/p>\n Kenneth \u201cthey think it\u2019s all over\u201d Wolstenholme, wartime bomber pilot<\/p>\n William Makepeace Thackeray, English author<\/p>\n Margaret McMillan, pioneer of nursery education<\/p>\n Henrietta King, rancher and philanthropist<\/p>\n Joan, the eldest daughter of King John<\/p>\n Alan Francis Brooke, a distinguished soldier and chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1941\u00a0<\/p>\n Rosalind Franklin, scientist who played an important role in the discovery of the double helix form of DNA<\/p>\n Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan and patron of Leonardo da Vinci<\/p>\n Karl Popper, philosopher<\/p>\n Philip Charles Durham, Scottish admiral<\/p>\n Giorgio Vasari, painter, architect and historian<\/p>\n Henry Ford, the American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> A quarter of a century after she had been burned at the stake for heresy, Joan of Arc was back in court. It was the summer of 1456, and Pope Callixtus III had authorised a retrial to investigate whether the saviour of Orl\u00e9ans had been unjustly convicted.<\/p>\n The court had decided, said the archbishop of Reims, that the original \u201ctrial and sentence, being filled with fraud, false charges, injustice, contradiction, and manifest errors concerning both fact and law\u201d should be considered \u201cnull, without effect, void, and of no consequence\u201d. It was clear, he said, that \u201cJoan did not contract any taint of infamy and that she shall be and is washed clean of such.\u201d<\/p>\n Shelley was sailing the Don Juan<\/em> back from Livorno to Lerici with his friend Edward Williams and a boat boy, Charles Vivian, when a violent summer storm sprang up.<\/p>\n Shelley reportedly had just enough time to cram a collection of John Keats\u2019 poems into his back pocket before he was swallowed by the turbulent sea. A poor swimmer, he stood no chance; indeed, all three men aboard the Don Juan<\/em> were lost. Their bodies, identifiable only by their clothing, washed ashore 10 days after the storm.<\/p>\n The title was won by Spencer Gore.<\/p>\n It was launched aboard a Delta rocket at Cape Canaveral. Telstar made possible the transatlantic transmission of live television images and was the inspiration for a hit record by The Tornados.<\/p>\n By the time the Hollywood adaptation appeared in 1962, Lee was a household name, feted as the writer who, perhaps more than any other, had persuaded white Middle America to face the harsh reality of racial prejudice.<\/p>\n She married the ageing king in the queen\u2019s closet at Hampton Court Palace with 18 people in attendance.<\/p>\n The daughter of royalist parents, Corday had seen her brothers flee abroad and had reportedly been inspired by the rhetoric of the more moderate Girondin faction. She pulled from her corset a five-inch kitchen knife, and plunged it deep into Marat\u2019s chest. \u201cHelp me, my dear!\u201d Marat screamed at his wife. But it was already too late; as blood gushed from the wound, he was dead within moments.<\/p>\n Bernard-Ren\u00e9 de Launay was not a bad man. Born in 1740, he had spent much of his career in the French Guards, stationed in Paris, before becoming, like his father before him, the governor of the vast state prison in the centre of the capital. Contrary to what was claimed in political pamphlets of the day, the Bastille was not really such a terrible place. De Launay himself had a reputation as a reasonably considerate gaoler, and far from being stuffed with political dissidents, the Bastille was actually pretty empty. On the morning of 14 July 1789, in fact, de Launay was in charge of only seven prisoners \u2013 four forgers, two madmen and a dissolute aristocrat.<\/p>\n To the Paris mob, however, the Bastille was a time-honoured symbol of royal oppression. With France in the grip of a severe economic crisis, bread prices soaring, the political system deadlocked and the streets full of hysterical rumours, it was perhaps only a matter of time before the demonstrators attacked the prison. On the morning of the 14th they struck, demanding that de Launay surrender the keys and hand over all arms and artillery. At around lunchtime, they broke through into the outer courtyard. Shots were fired; the mood turned ever uglier. By 5.30 that afternoon, the fortress had fallen.<\/p>\n Launched in November 1095, the First Crusade reached its climax at the walls of Jerusalem nearly four years later. It was the height of summer, and outside the walls of the holy city, some 12,000 crusaders were preparing for the final assault. On the night of 14 July, the crusaders attacked from two siege towers. At the city\u2019s north-eastern gate, two knights from Tournai led the charge, soon followed by scores more. And as the resistance crumbled, the blood began to flow.<\/p>\n It was almost 5.30am on 16 July 1945, in the dawn heat of the New Mexico desert, when the bomb exploded.<\/p>\n \u201cI was staring straight ahead with my open left eye covered by a welder\u2019s glass and my right eye remaining open and uncovered,\u201d recalled one observer, Ralph Carlisle Smith, who was watching from a nearby hilltop. \u201cSuddenly, my right eye was blinded by a light which appeared instantaneously all about without any build up of intensity. My left eye could see the ball of fire start up like a tremendous bubble\u2026 It turned yellow, then red, and then beautiful purple.\u201d<\/p>\n On 17 July 1955 in Anaheim, California, Walt Disney welcomed Americans into his very own Garden of Eden. \u201cTo all who come to this happy place, welcome,\u201d he proclaimed.<\/p>\n Romanian gymnast Nadia Coma\u0306neci won the first ever perfect 10 for her routine on the uneven bars. The scoreboard flashed up \u201c1.00\u201d, the nearest it could get to a 10. Then she did it again \u2013 and again, and again, six times in all.<\/p>\n The tiny village of Seneca Falls, New York has an extraordinary claim to fame. It was here that the world\u2019s first convention on women\u2019s rights opened on 19 July 1848 \u2013 a two-day meeting that became one of the foundational events of the international feminist movement.<\/p>\n Spencer Compton, Britain\u2019s second prime minister<\/p>\n Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize-winning author<\/p>\n Alfred Lyttelton, former colonial secretary<\/p>\n Aneurin \u2018Nye\u2019 Bevan, Welsh Labour politician and architect of the National Health Service<\/p>\n George Fox, Quaker, writer, preacher and former Parliamentarian soldier<\/p>\n Hadrian, Roman emperor\u00a0<\/p>\n Albert Kesselring, German Second World War field marshal<\/p>\n Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray<\/p>\n Martin van Buren, the eighth president of the United States<\/p>\n John Wilmot, Restoration poet, courtier and rake<\/p>\n Vincent Van Gogh, post- impressionist painter<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> For the people of Ephesus, the Temple of Artemis was a source of immense local pride. Reportedly built by the extraordinarily rich king Croesus, it was said to have been made largely of marble, boasting huge pillars. For visitors, there were few better attractions in the Greek world. Pilgrims brought jewellery as a gift for the goddess; refugees came to seek sanctuary.<\/p>\n But on 21 July 356, disaster struck. The man responsible was one Herostratus, who may have been an outsider or a slave. Supposedly hungry for fame, he decided to set the temple\u2019s wooden rafters alight, \u201cso that through the destruction of this most beautiful building his name might be spread through the whole world\u201d.<\/p>\n The result was a tragedy. In the space of a single night, the temple was consumed by flames, and by morning it was a blackened, broken ruin.<\/p>\n The Albigensian Crusade, which began in 1209, was one of the most blood- stained pages in medieval European history. At its heart was Pope Innocent III\u2019s desire to stamp out the Cathar heresy \u2013 a form of Christianity condemned by the Catholic church \u2013 as well as the French king Philip II\u2019s eagerness to crush the semi-detached County of Toulouse. But the victims, whose voices have largely been lost to history, were the people of the Languedoc, southern France, who found themselves facing a French royal army determined to take no prisoners.<\/p>\n Shortly before midnight on 25 July, Lesley Brown gave birth to her daughter Louise \u2013 then widely described as the world\u2019s first \u2018test tube baby\u2019.<\/p>\n For the Brown family, that moment on 25 July was of course one of unutterable joy. But letters poured in from across the world, many of them downright abusive. One parcel from California contained a series of letters covered in red liquid, a broken glass test tube and a plastic foetus.<\/p>\n Still, there were messages of support, too. \u201cI fear that you will find yourselves on the receiving end of all the usual criticism and condemnation that follows any medical breakthrough, so am writing to try in a tiny way to even things up,\u201d read one letter, sent all the way from Australia.<\/p>\n Between the villages of Bramley and Hambledon, with both sides dressed in cricketing whites and sporting blue and red ribbons in their hair.<\/p>\n As Thomas Cromwell<\/a> was being taken to the scaffold for his execution, the Duke of Norfolk\u2019s pretty teenage niece was dressing for the most important day of her life. Only a few days earlier, the king had secured an annulment of his marriage to Anne of Cleves<\/a>, and his eye had already fallen on Catherine<\/a> as her replacement. It was apparently love \u2013 or lust \u2013 at first sight, at least for Henry.<\/p>\n Did Catherine know that, even as she was repeating her marriage vows at Surrey\u2019s Oatlands Palace, Cromwell\u2019s freshly severed head was rotting on a spike? We will never know. What we do know, though, is that her 49-year-old husband seemed aflame with passion, since reports suggest he could barely keep his hands off her.<\/p>\n3 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1996: The government promises to return the Stone of Scone<\/h4>\n
4 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1862: The tale of Alice in Wonderland<\/a><\/em> is born<\/h4>\n
5 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1948: The NHS<\/a> is launched<\/h4>\n
![\""Aneurin\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/06\/GettyImages-2659674-dfaeee3-e1687967580496.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C412"\" "\\"\"Aneurin\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>6 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1885: Louis Pasteur unveils his cure for rabies<\/h4>\n
Famous births in July<\/h2>\n
1 July 1961<\/h6>\n
2 July 1862<\/h6>\n
3 July 1883<\/h6>\n
5 July 1810<\/h6>\n
8 July 1621\u00a0<\/h6>\n
8 July 1640<\/h6>\n
13 July 1811<\/h6>\n
14 July 1862\u00a0<\/h6>\n
15 July 1811\u00a0<\/h6>\n
17 July 1920\u00a0<\/h6>\n
18 July 1811\u00a0<\/h6>\n
20 July 1860<\/h6>\n
21 July 1832\u00a0<\/h6>\n
22 July 1210\u00a0<\/h6>\n
23 July 1883\u00a0<\/h6>\n
25 July 1920<\/h6>\n
27 July 1452<\/h6>\n
28 July 1902\u00a0<\/h6>\n
29 July 1763\u00a0<\/h6>\n
30 July 1511\u00a0<\/h6>\n
30 July 1863\u00a0<\/h6>\n
7 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1456: Joan of Arc is posthumously acquitted of her crimes<\/h4>\n
![\""Joan\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/06\/GettyImages-113436908-5cf0e8d-e1687967387102.jpg?quality=90&resize=619%2C413"\" "\\"\"Joan\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>8 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1822: Percy Shelley drowns in a boat off Italy<\/h4>\n
9 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1877: The world\u2019s first tennis tournament opens at the All England Club, Wimbledon<\/a><\/h4>\n
10 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1962: The Telstar communications satellite is launched<\/h4>\n
11 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1960: Harper Lee publishes her debut novel, To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em><\/h4>\n
![\""Harper\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/06\/GettyImages-77695641-651a9b2-e1687967471169.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C412"\" "\\"\"Harper\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>12 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1543: Katherine Parr<\/a> became the sixth consort of Henry VIII<\/a><\/h4>\n
13 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1793: Jean-Paul Marat, a fervent supporter of the French Revolution<\/a>, is stabbed to death in his bathtub by Girondin sympathiser Charlotte Corday<\/h4>\n
14 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1789: Mobs storm the Bastille<\/a>, and the symbol of Parisian royal oppression is brought to its knees<\/h4>\n
15 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1099: Jerusalem falls to the crusaders<\/a><\/h4>\n
16 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1945: The US tests its atomic bomb<\/a><\/h4>\n
17 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1955: Disneyland<\/a> opens to the world<\/h4>\n
![\""Julie\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/06\/GettyImages-141441736-f612477-e1687967212106.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C411"\" "\\"\"Julie\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>18 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1976: Olympic gymnast Nadia Coma\u0306neci makes history with her faultless routine<\/h4>\n
19 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1848: The world\u2019s first women\u2019s rights convention demands equality<\/h4>\n
Famous deaths in July<\/h2>\n
2 July 1743<\/h6>\n
2 July 1961<\/h6>\n
5 July 1913<\/h6>\n
6 July 1960<\/h6>\n
7 July 1661<\/h6>\n
10 July 138<\/h6>\n
16 July 1960\u00a0<\/h6>\n
20 July 1332<\/h6>\n
24 July 1862\u00a0<\/h6>\n
26 July 1680<\/h6>\n
29 July 1890\u00a0<\/h6>\n
20 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1923: Former Mexican revolutionary leader Jos\u00e9 Doroteo Arango Ar\u00e1mbula, better known as Pancho Villa, is assassinated while driving in his car through the town of Parral, Chihuahua<\/h4>\n
21 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
356 BC: The Temple of Artemis burns to the ground<\/h4>\n
22 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1209: French crusaders slay thousands in the name of God<\/h4>\n
23 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1903: In Chicago, Dr Ernst Pfenning becomes the first man to buy a Ford motor car, spending less than $1,000 on a Model A.<\/h4>\n
24 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1911: In the jungles of Peru, the American explorer and amateur archaeologist Hiram Bingham comes across the site of Machu Picchu<\/a>, then virtually unknown in the outside world.<\/h4>\n
25 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1978: World\u2019s first IVF baby is born<\/h4>\n
![\""Louise\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/06\/GettyImages-837482010-5244e07-e1687967202516.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C412"\" "\\"\"Louise\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>26 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1745: Gosden Common near Guildford hosts the first recorded women\u2019s cricket match<\/h4>\n
27 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1953: The United Nations, North Korea and China signed an armistice to bring about a ceasefire in the Korean War. However, no peace treaty was ever signed.<\/h4>\n
28 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1540: Henry VIII marries wife number five<\/h4>\n
29 July<\/a><\/h2>\n
1981: Prince Charles<\/a> marries Lady Diana Spencer<\/a><\/h4>\n