ON JULY 26 ...
In 1775 Benjamin Franklin became the first postmaster general.
In 1875 Carl Jung, the founder of analytic psychology, was born in Kesswil, Switzerland.
In 1922 actor Jason Robards was born in Chicago.
In 1928 film director Stanley Kubrick was born in New York.
In 1943 Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger was born in Dartford, England.
In 1945 Winston Churchill resigned as Britain’s prime minister after the Labour Party scored a landslide election victory over his Conservatives. (Clement Attlee would be named prime minister.)
In 1947 President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act, which created the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In 1952 Illinois Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson II was nominated for president by the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Also in 1952 Egyptian King Farouk I abdicated in the wake of a coup led by Gamal Abdel Nasser.
In 1953 Fidel Castro launched a revolt against Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista with an unsuccessful attack on an army barracks in eastern Cuba.
In 1956 Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal.
In 1964 Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa and six others were convicted of fraud and conspiracy in the handling of a union pension fund.
In 1990 President George H.W. Bush signed into law the Americans With Disabilities Act.
In 1995 the Senate voted 69-29 to unilaterally lift the U.N. embargo on arms shipments to Bosnia. Also in 1995 former Michigan
Gov. George Romney, father of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, died; he was 88.
In 1996 swimmer Amy Van Dyken became the first American woman to win four gold medals at a single Olympics as she captured the 50-meter freestyle in Atlanta.
In 2000 a federal judge in New York approved a $1.25 billion settlement between Swiss banks and more than 500,000 plaintiffs who alleged the banks had hoarded money deposited by Holocaust victims.
In 2005 America’s manned space program roared back to life with the launch of Discovery, 2 1/2 years after the Columbia disaster. Also in 2005 Cubs pitcher Greg Maddux recorded his 3,000 career strikeout against San Francisco in the third inning of a 3-2, 11-inning victory for the Giants.
In 2013 Ariel Castro, the Cleveland bus driver who sexually abused three women he held prisoner for about a decade, pleaded guilty to more than 900 counts of criminal behavior and accepted a plea deal that spared him the death penalty. (Castro, 53, later received a life sentence.)
In 2017 the Chicago City Council began a new format of opening its meeting with a half-hour of commentary from members of the public after a judge had ruled that not allowing it violated the state Open Meetings Act. Also in 2017 President Donald Trump tweeted that he wants transgender people barred from serving in the U.S. military “in any capacity”; the next day the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Pentagon policy would not change until the White House issued Trump’s directive through formal channels — not on Twitter.