July 1 in History

96AD – Vespasian, a Roman Army commander, is declared emperor by the Roman Egypt legions – in the Year of the Four Emperors. Galba, Otho, and Vitellius successively rise and fall before Vespasian’s accession (confirmed by the Senate on December 21). He reigns until his death on June 24 79.

1569 – The Lublin Union is signed to create a single state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

1818 – Ignaz Semmelweis, Hungarian gynaecologist, is born in Buda. He connects puerperal (childbed) fever, common in mid-19th-century hospitals and often fatal, to doctors who spread germs due to their failure to wash their hands. In 1847 – while working in Vienna General Hospital’s First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors’ wards have three times the mortality of midwives’ wards – he proposes washing hands with chlorinated lime solutions. Semmelweis’s practice is rejected by the medical community and offends some doctors. It earns widespread acceptance only years after his death in 1865 (at 47), when Louis Pasteur confirms the germ theory.

1903 – The first Tour de France starts with 60 riders from the Cafe au Réveil-Matin in Montgeron, Paris. On July 19, 20 000 spectators at Paris’s Parc de Princes velodrome witness Maurice Garin’s victory. The last of 21 finishers arrives more than two days later. Garin’s winning margin of 2 hours and 49 minutes remains the largest in Tour history and the 2 428km the second shortest.

1908 – Estée Lauder, co-founder (with her husband Joseph) of Estée Lauder Companies, is born in NYC. 1938 – The South African Press Association (Sapa), the first national news association, is established. 1961 – Diana Frances Spencer, Princess of Wales, is born in Park House, Sandringham, England.

1994 – PLO chairman Yasser Arafat drives from Egypt into Gaza, returning to Palestinian land after 27 years in exile.

1997 – Hong Kong reverts to Chinese rule after 156 years as a British colony.

1997 – The Nevada Athletic Commission suspends Mike Tyson for biting Evander Holyfield’s ears in a world title fight three days earlier.

1999 – In Saint-Étienne-en-Dévoluy, France, a cable car gondola detaches from its cable, plunges 80m onto the rocky slopes below, disintegrates and kills the 20 people on board (all staff members of the Plateau de Bure Astronomical Observatory – five astronomers, nine construction workers, four technicians and two maintenance workers).

2003 – Roman Abramovich, 36, Russian billionaire, buys Chelsea FC from long-time chairman Ken Bates in a deal worth £140m. Bates bought the club in 1982 for just £1, while taking on debts of £1.5m.