July 22 in History
1598 — William Shakespeare’s play “The Merchant of Venice” is entered on the Stationers’ Register under the title “The Marchaunt of Venyce or otherwise called the Jewe of Venyce”.
1822 — Gregor Johann Mendel, botanist and monk who develops the theory of heredity, is born in Heinzendorf, Silesia, Austrian Empire.
1894 — The world’s first motor race with prizes and a promotor (128km from Paris to Rouen) is organised by newspaper publisher Pierre Giffard. Albert Lemaître, with three passengers in a 3hp petrolengined Peugeot Type 7, wins in six hours 51 minutes and 30 seconds. Comte Jules-Albert de Dion’s steam-powered De Dion-Bouton is first home, but ineligible for the main prize because it needs a “technical assistant ”(stoker).
1934 — Outlaw John Dillinger, 31, is shot dead by FBI agents outside Chicago’s Biograph Theatre. Some 15 000 people view his body at the Cook County morgue over a day and a half. At least four death masks are also made.
1942 — The Nazis start moving 300 000 Warsaw Ghetto Jews to Treblinka Extermination Camp.
1957 — Walter “Fred” Morrison submits a patent for his “Pluto Platter” — the Frisbee (the brand name toy manufacturer Wham-O started using on packaging for the toy on June 17). Morrison discovered a market for a flying disc in 1938 when he and future wife Lucile were offered 25c for a 5c-worth cake pan they were tossing back and forth on a beach near Los Angeles. 1963 — Malaysia’s Crown Colony of Sarawak gains self-governance.
1969 — Spanish dictator (1939-75) Francisco Franco appoints Prince Juan Carlos de Borbon y Borbon, grandson of Alfonso XIII (Spanish king from his birth in 1886 until the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1931), as official successor to the position of Head of State. On November 22 1975, two days after
Franco’s death, the Cortes Generales proclaim Juan Carlos King of Spain — thus restoring the monarchy. 1981 — Turkish extremist and escapee Mehmet Ali Agca is sentenced in Rome to life in prison for shooting Pope John Paul II on May 13. He escaped from a Turkish prison six months after receiving a life sentence for the February 1 1979 murder of newspaper editor Abdi Ipekçi in Istanbul. He is pardoned by Italy in June 2000 and serves 10 years in Turkey for the Ipekçi murder. On December 27 2014 Agca lays white roses on the recently canonised Saint John Paul II’s tomb at the Vatican.
2011 — Two attacks in Norway claim 77 lives — a car bomb outside government buildings in Oslo (eight dead, 209 injured) and a mass shooting at a youth camp on the island of Utøya (69 dead, 110 wounded).