1917 US WW I draft lottery held; #258 is first drawn.

1944 Japanese aircraft carrier Hijo sunk by US air attack.

1944 Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt led by German army officer Claus Von Stauffenberg.

1969 Apollo 11 lunar module carrying Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins lands on the surface of the Moon; Aldrin and Armstrong walk on the moon seven hours later.

1915 Woodrow Wilson sends the third Lusitania note, warning Germany that future infringement of American rights will be deemed 'deliberately unfriendly'

1918 U-156 shells Nauset Beach, in Orleans, Massachusetts.

1921 To prove his contention that air power is superior to sea power, US Colonel William Mitchell demonstrates how bombs from planes can sink a captured German battleship.

1941 Himmler orders building of Majdanek concentration camp.

1959 First nuclear powered merchant ship, NS Savannah, named, Camden NJ.

1969 Apollo 11: Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to step on the Moon at 2:56:15 AM (GMT)

First Manassas or First Bull Run
 

1942 Warsaw Ghetto Jews (300,000) are sent to Treblinka Extermination Camp.

2011 Norway is the victim of twin terror attacks, the first a bomb blast targeting government buildings in central Oslo, second a massacre at a youth camp on island of Utøya.

1942 Adolf Hitler's Directive number 45: order for army to advance on Stalingrad.

1943 Battle of Kursk, USSR ends in German defeat (6,000 tanks).

1947 First (US Navy) air squadron of jets, Quonset Point, Rhode Island.

1956 Bell X-2 rocket plane sets world aircraft speed record of 3,050 kph.

1917 Trial of Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari begins in Paris for allegedly spying for Germany and thus causing the deaths of 50,000 soldiers.

1941 Nazis kill entire Jewish population of Grodz, Lithuania.

1943 Operation Gomorrah: RAF begins bombing Hamburg (till 3rd August), creating a firestorm and killing 42,600 people.

1944 Soviet forces liberate concentration camp Majdanek.

1945 US destroyer Underhill torpedoed West of Guam.

1969 Apollo 11 returns to Earth.

1985 French DGSE officers Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart are arrested and charged with murder over the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior.

1990 US warships in Persian Gulf placed on alert after Iraq masses nearly 30,000 troops near its border with Kuwait.

2001 An Iranian warship in the Caspian Sea threatens a BP oil exploration ship off the coast of Azerbaijan.

1797 Horatio Nelson loses more than 300 men and his right arm during the failed conquest attempt of Tenerife (Spain).

1866 David Faragut appointed as first admiral in US Navy.

1943 First warship named after an African American launched - USS Leonard Roy Harmon, a Buckley class destroyer.

1944 First jet fighter used in combat (Messerschmitt 262).

1944 Operation Spring - one of Canada's bloodiest days, 18,444 casualties and 5,021 killed.

1946 US detonates underwater A-bomb at Bikini (5th atomic explosion).

1944 The first German V-2 rocket hits Great Britain (nicknamed "gasometer").

1945 Declaration of Potsdam: US, Britain and China demand the Japanese surrender during WWII

1945 Japanese government disregards US ultimatum.

1945 US cruiser Indianapolis reaches Tinian with atom bomb.

1945 Winston Churchill resigns as Britain's Prime Minister after election defeat.

1945 Physicist Raemer Schreiber and Lieutenant Colonel Peer de Silva depart Kirtland Army Air Field to transport the plutonium core for the Fat Man bomb (bombing of Nagasaki) to the island of Tinian where the bomb is assembled.

1957 USSR launches first intercontinental multistage ballistic missile.

1962 Maria Oeljanov, first airship with nuclear missiles, arrives in Cuba.

1586 Walter Raleigh brings the first tobacco to England from Virginia.

1944 First British jet fighter used in combat (Gloster Meteor).

1953 North Korea and the United Nations sign armistice to stop fighting and divide Korea at the 38th parallel.

1914 Austria-Hungary decides against mediation and declares war on Serbia - first declaration of war of WWI

1914 First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill orders British Grand Fleet to Scapa Flow.

1943 Operation Gomorrah: RAF bombing over Hamburg causes a firestorm that kills 42,600 German civilians.

1945 Japanese premier Suzuki disregards US ultimatum to surrender.

1945 US Army B-25 crashes into 79th floor of Empire State Bldg, 14 die. "Elevator girl" Betty Lou Oliver survives falling 75 stories after fog caused the US bomber plane to crash into the Empire State Building, breaking the cables supporting the elevator she was operating. This remains a world record for the longest survived elevator fall.

1945 Physicist Raemer Schreiber and Lieutenant Colonel Peer de Silva arrive on the Pacific island of Tinian with the plutonium core used to assemble the Fat Man bomb used in the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9.

2005 The Provisional Irish Republican Army call an end to their thirty year long armed campaign in Northern Ireland.

10 Thermidor, Year II: ( French revolutionary calendar) Maximillian Robespierre 'buys the farm' and gets a very close shave...:/\\chop:|\\:dead:

1921 Adolf Hitler becomes leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

1949 Moscow ends the blockade of West Berlin.

1916 German saboteurs blow up a munitions plant on Black Tom Island, New Jersey.

1942 FDR signs bill creating women's Navy auxiliary agency (WAVES).

1945 After delivering the Atomic Bomb across the Pacific, the cruiser USS Indianapolis is torpedoed and sunk by Japanese submarine I-58. 880 of the crew died, many after being attacked by sharks, the inspiration for the movie Jaws.

1963 British spy Kim Philby found in Moscow.

1914 German Emperor Wilhelm II threatens war, orders Russia to demobilize.

1917 World War I: Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres) begins, goes on to cause approximately 500,000 casualties.

1941 U-boats sink and damage 21 allied ships this month (80,521 tons).

1942 German SS gases 1,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia.

1943 Transport #58 departs with French Jews to Nazi Germany.

1944 Last deportation train out Mechelen departs to Auschwitz.

1944 Transport #77 departs with French Jews to Nazi Germany.

1945 Pierre Laval, fugitive former leader of Vichy France, surrenders to Allied soldiers in Austria.

1970 Black Tot Day: the last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy (started 1740).

2007 Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end.

1798 Battle of the Nile: British Royal Navy under Admiral Horatio Nelson attacks and decimates the French fleet at Aboukir Bay off the Nile Delta, Egypt.

1914 British Grand Fleet reaches Scapa Flow.

1943 Sunderland seaplanes sink U-454 & U-383

1944 Anne Frank's last diary entry; 3 days later she is arrested.

1944 Polish resistance fighters of the Home Army launch the Warsaw Uprising, the largest military effort undertaken by a resistance movement in occupied Europe.

1958 US atomic submarine USS Nautilus begins first transit of North Pole "operation Sunshine"