Today in History
July 26 1847 - Liberia declares independence. 1865 - Patrick Francis Healy becomes the first AfricanAmerican to earn a PhD.
1892 - Dadabhai Naoroji becomes Britain’s first Asian Member of Parliament.
1908 - The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is born in US.
1920 - The 19th Amendment to the American Constitution is ratified, granting women the right to vote.
1945 - Winston Churchill resigns as Britain’s Prime Minister, following his party’s electoral defeat.
1947 - The US Department of Defence is established under the Armed Forces Unification Act.
1952 - Eva Perón, First Lady of Argentina, dies.
1956 - Egypt nationalises the Suez Canal.
1965 - The Republic of Maldives gains independence from Britain.
1971 - Apollo 15 is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida, for a fourth lunar landing and the debut of the lunar rover.
1974 - Konstantinos Karamanlis, new Greek premier, forms civilian Cabinet after seven years of military rule in Greece.
1986 - American hostage Lawrence Jenco is freed in Lebanon after 18 months’ captivity.
1998 - Prime Minister Hun Sen’s party wins a majority in Cambodia elections.
2001 - Indonesia’s ousted President Abdul Rahman Wahid vacates the palace and leaves the country.
2003 - Three powerful earthquakes strike northern Japan and at least 421 people are injured.
2008 - More than 55 are killed and many injured when 16 bomb blasts hit Ahmedabad, India.
2009 - India’s first nuclear submarine is unveiled to the public.
2010 - A suspected Al Qaida suicide bomber blows up a car by the Baghdad office of Al Arabiya television, killing four people.
2011 - All 80 passengers of a military plane are killed when it crashes into a mountain in southern Morocco.
2013 - Fifty-seven people are killed in twin bomb explosions in a busy market in north-west Pakistan.
2015 - American singer and actress Bobbi Kristina Brown dies at a hospice in Duluth, Georgia.
2016 - Solar Impulse 2 lands in Abu Dhabi after creating history by circumnavigating the globe without using a drop of fossil fuel.