Today in History, July 23

HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY ON THIS DATE:

1588 - English army assembles at Tilbury to repel invasion by Spanish Armada.

1785 - Prussia's Frederick the Great forms Die Fuerstenbund (League of German Princes).

1829 - The first typewriter is patented by William Burt of Mount Vernon, Michigan.

1903 - The Ford Motor Company sells its first car.

1904 - The ice cream cone is invented by Charles E Menches during the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis.

1913 - Second Revolution breaks out in south China to force from power military commander Yuan Shih-kai. He wins the armed struggle, ending hope for democracy in China after the abdication of the emperor.

1914 - Austria and Hungary issue ultimatum to Serbia after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. The dispute leads to World War I.

1916 - The Battle of Pozieres begins in France's Somme Valley. In its first four days the Australian Imperial Force suffers 5285 casualties.

1920 - King Faisal's Arab army is defeated at Maysaloun, and Syria falls under French control.

1921 - The first meeting of the Chinese Communist Party is held in Shanghai.

1945 - Marshal Henri Philippe Petain is put on trial, charged with betraying France during World War II.

1952 - Egyptian military officers led by Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrow King Farouk I.

1958 - Queen Elizabeth names four women to peerages - the first women to sit in Britain's House of Lords.

1974 - Greece's military rulers announce they will turn nation back to civilian rule.

1983 - A regional struggle for independence by Tamils in Sri Lanka's north and east escalates into a civil war when they kill 13 Sri Lankan soldiers. The nation's Sinhalese majority responds by killing hundreds of Tamil civilians in the south.

1996 - Aided by US spy photographs, war crimes investigators in Bosnia recover more than a dozen bodies thought to belong to Muslims executed after the fall of the city of Srebrenica.

1997 - Swiss banks publish lists of World War II era depositors in newspaper advertisements throughout the world.

2002 - Israeli fighter jet drops a 1-ton bomb on a crowded residential neighbourhood in Gaza City, killing Salah Shehada, a Palestinian militant, and 14 civilians. The strike draws widespread condemnation for the high civilian death toll.

2005 - A Brazilian man killed by British police in a dramatic subway shooting had nothing to do with a series of bombing attacks on London's transit system, police announce, calling the death a "tragedy" and expressing their regret.

2008 - Ukraine blames Soviet leaders for a famine that killed millions of people in 1932-33 and publishes documents it says "unequivocally" proved its case - part of its campaign to get the tragedy recognised as genocide.

2010 - Researchers in Mexico say a scientific reconstruction of one of the oldest sets of human remains found in the Americas appears to support theories that the first people who came to the hemisphere migrated from a broader area than once thought.

2013 - Prince William and his wife Kate present their newborn son to the world for the first time, later named Prince George. He is third in line to rule Britain after his grandfather, Prince Charles and William.

2014 - Bomb blasts appearing to target former Nigerian military leader Muhammadu Buhari and a prominent moderate Muslim cleric kills dozens of people in the northern city of Kaduna but leave both leaders unharmed.

2015 - At least 35 people are killed in a boat crash on the Nile in Egypt.

2017 - 10 people are found dead inside a sweltering trailer parked at a Walmart store in San Antonio Texas in what authorities have called a case of "ruthless" human trafficking.

Today's Birthdays:

Francesco Sforza, Italian mercenary and duke of Milan (1401-1466); Lord Allanbrooke, English soldier (1883-1963); Raymond Chandler, US author (1888-1959); Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia (1891-1975); Elio Vittorini, Italian novelist, translator and literary critic (1908-1966); Abigail, British-born Australian actress of No 96 fame (1946-); Woody Harrelson, US actor (1961-); Philip Seymour Hoffman, US actor (1967-2014); Alison Krauss, US country singer (1971-); Michelle Williams, US singer and actress (1980-); Bec Hewitt, Australian singer and actress (1983-); Daniel Radcliffe, British actor (1989-).

Thought For Today:

To be proud and inaccessible is to be timid and weak - Jean Baptiste Massillon, French clergyman (1663-1742).

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