This Week In History
July 1, 1858
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was first presented in public when his papers were read at a meeting of the Linnean Society in London
1991: East European leaders met in Prague to dissolve the Warsaw Pact 2000: The Øresund crossing linked Sweden and Denmark for the first time since the Ice Age 2004: Saddam Hussein appeared in an Iraqi court charged with crimes including the gas attacks on the Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988 2010: China’s Huning Intercity High-Speed Railway opened between Shanghai and Nanjing
July 2, 1853
The Russian army crossed into the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, then part of the Ottoman Empire, instigating the Crimean War 1963: US President John F. Kennedy met Pope Paul VI at the Vatican 2001: A patient in Louisville, Kentucky, received the first fully-implantable artificial heart 2004: The Cassini spacecraft transmitted its first close-up pictures of Saturn’s giant moon Titan 2008: Former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, held captive by FARC guerillas for six years, was freed
July 3, 1988
The Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge was completed in Istanbul, Turkey, providing a second crossing between Europe and Asia over the Bosphorus
1863: The US Civil War Battle of Gettysburg ended in a major victory for the North as Confederate troops retreated. Some 7,000 men died 1928: John Logie Baird transmitted the world’s first colour television pictures 2006: The first train from Beijing to Tibet arrived in Lhasa 2008: NASA revealed the discovery of water in the atmosphere of Mercury by its Messenger probe
July 4, 1924
Chef Caesar Cardini, running out of food for his customers, created a salad from odds and ends that remained. Caesar salad was an instant hit
1903: The first Pacific telegraph cable went into operation between San Francisco and Manila, in the Philippines 2012: The discovery of a subatomic particle, subsequently confirmed to be the Higgs boson, was announced
2016: NASA’s Juno spacecraft successfully entered orbit around Jupiter 2017: North Korea tested its first long-range ICBM, sparking a war of words with the United States
July 5, 1948
The National Health Service was founded in Britain. Its three core principles are that services should be comprehensive, universal and free at the point of delivery
2003: Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up at a Moscow rock festival, killing 15 people 2003: The global Sars outbreak was finally contained. The epidemic killed 800 people worldwide
2004: Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic opened his defence in The Hague, charged with war crimes 2007: Scientists announced the discovery off Hawaii of a possible new species of cephalopod
July 6, 1988
The Piper Alpha oil platform exploded in the North Sea, killing 167 people. It remains the world’s worst offshore accident in terms of lives lost
1928: The first all-talking feature film, The Lights Of New York ,was premiered 2003: Ould M’Bareck, a former slave turned politician, became prime minister of Mauritania, which only abolished slavery in 1980
2013: A runaway train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded in the Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, killing 47 2016: Nintendo released its augmented reality game,
Pokémon Go, which became an instant hit
July 7, 1591
The week-long festival of San Fermin, famous for the “encierro”, or running of the bulls, was established in the Spanish city of Pamplona 1853: Japan opened up to trade after more than 200 years of isolation 1936: US patents were issued for the crosshead Phillips screw and matching screwdriver
2003: NASA concluded that the Columbia shuttle disaster was probably caused by a piece of insulating foam falling off and striking the wing 2017: The UN adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, with 122 states voting in favour