On July 25 in …

306 –- His troops proclaim Constantine I emperor of the Roman Empire. On the same date nine years later, the iconic Arch of Constantine is completed near the Colosseum in the city of Rome to commemorate one of his major military victories.

1609 — The English ship Sea Venture, en route to Virginia, is deliberately driven ashore at Bermuda during a storm to prevent its sinking. The survivors will go on to found a new colony on the island instead of continuing to Virginia.

1722 –- Dummer’s War erupts along the border area between Maine and Massachusetts. It is the first in a series of battles between New England and the Wabanaki Confederacy who were allied with New France. The essential cause is a dispute between French and English local governments over borders. William Dummer was the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. (It also is variously known as Father Rale’s War, Lovewell’s War, Greylock’s War, the Three Years War, and the 4th Anglo-Abenaki War.)

1861 — Congress passes the Crittenden–Johnson Resolution, stating that the Civil War being fought against the Confederacy is being fought to preserve the Union, not to end slavery.

1978 –- Louise Brown, the world’s first “test tube baby,” is born in England as a result of in vitro fertilization. She was delivered by planned Caesarean section, weighing 5 pounds, 12 ounces.

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On July 24 in …

1487 –- Citizens of the Dutch city of Leeuwarden go on strike against a government ban on foreign beer.

1823 – Slavery is abolished in Chile, five years after the South American nation had declared its independence from Spanish rule.

1847 — Mormon leader Brigham Young and his followers arrive in the valley of the Great Salt Lake in present-day Utah.

1866 — Tennessee becomes the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War.

1911 –- Hiram Bingham III, an American academic, explorer and politician, re-discovers Machu Picchu, known as “the Lost City of the Incas.”

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On July 23 in …

1715 — The first lighthouse in America is authorized for construction at Little Brewster Island, MA.

1829 –- American inventor and surveyor William Austin Burt receives a U.S. patent for the typographer, a precursor to the typewriter. (In his lifetime he also is credited with inventing the first workable solar compass, a solar use surveying instrument, and the equatorial sextant, a precision navigational aid to determine with one observation the location of a ship at sea.)

1904 — The ice cream cone is introduced by Charles E. Menches during the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, MO.

1929 — Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s Fascist government bans the use of foreign words.

1962 — The Telstar communications satellite relays the first publicly-transmitted, live trans-Atlantic television program. It features newscaster and program host Walter Cronkite.

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On July 22 in …

1686 — Albany, NY, is formally chartered by Governor Thomas Dongan as a municipality. That document becomes known as the Dongan Charter. Originally a Dutch settlement called Fort Orange, after being taken over by the English it was renamed for the Scottish Duke of Albany, whose title came from the Gaelic name for Scotland, Alba.

1706 — The Acts of Union 1707 are agreed upon by commissioners from the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland, which, when passed by each country’s parliament, will lead to the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain.

1796 — Surveyors working for the Connecticut Land Company name an area in Ohio “Cleveland” after Gen. Moses Cleaveland (note the spelling difference), who is the superintendent of the surveying party.

1933 — Aviator Wiley Post returns to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, NY, completing the first solo flight around the world. His journey took 7 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes.

1937 — The U.S. Senate rejects President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s proposal to add more seats to the nine-member Supreme Court.

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On July 21 in …

365 –- A tsunami caused by an earthquake on the Mediterranean island of Crete more than 400 miles away devastates the northern Egyptian metropolis of Alexandria. It later will be estimated to have been magnitude 8.5 or higher. More than 50,000 people in the city and immediate environs will die.

1861 — The first major battle of the Civil War begins, the Battle of Bull Run at Manassas Junction, VA. The Confederate forces will emerge victorious.

1865 –- In the market square of Springfield, MO, James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok shoots and kills Davis Tutt, a gambler and former Confederate soldier, in what is regarded by many historians as the first western “showdown” gunfight.

1931 — CBS broadcasts the first regularly-scheduled program to be simulcast on radio and television. The show features singer Kate Smith, composer George Gershwin, and New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker.

1983 –- The world’s lowest temperature in an inhabited location is recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica, of −128.6° Farenheit.

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On July 20 in …

1799 — Tekle Guyorgis I begins the first of his six separate reigns as emperor of Ethiopia.

1807 — Nicephone Nuepce is awarded a patent by Napolean for what he calls the “Pyreolophore.” It is the first internal combustion engine and was used to power a boat upstream on the river Saone in France.

1903 — The Ford Motor Company ships its first car.

1917 — The modern Kingdom of Yugoslavia is created by the Corfu Declaration, a document codifying an agreement between the Yugoslav Committee and the Kingdom of Serbia.

1968 — The first International Special Olympics Summer Games begin at Soldier Field in Chicago, with about 1,000 athletes participating.

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On July 19 in …

1545 –- The Tudor warship Mary Rose sinks off Portsmouth, England. In 1982, the wreck will be salvaged in one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology.

1845 –- The last great fire to broadly affect Manhattan begins early in the morning and is subdued by late afternoon, but not before it claims the lives of four firefighters and 26 civilians, and destroys 345 buildings.

1848 — In Seneca Falls, NY, the first Women’s Rights Convention takes place. Bloomers are introduced at the event.

1943 –- Rome is heavily bombed by more than 500 Allied aircraft in a major World War II  strike, inflicting thousands of casualties.

1997 -– The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) resumes a ceasefire to end “The Troubles,” its 25-year-long campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland.

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On July 18 in …

64 A.D. –- The Great Fire of Rome begins, and will rage for six days, causing widespread devastation that will destroy half of the city. Emperor Nero will counter widespread rumors that the fire was started at his behest to clear the way for his new projects by blaming the devastation on the Christian community in the city. That will initiate the Roman Empire’s first persecution of the Christians.

1290 –- King Edward I of England issues the “Edict of Expulsion,” banishing all of England’s 16,000 Jews from the land. This is called Tisha B’Av on the Hebrew calendar, a day that commemorates many Jewish calamities.

1925 –- Adolf Hitler publishes his personal manifesto, “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”).

1969 -– After a party on Chappaquiddick Island at Martha’s Vineyard, Senator Ted Kennedy, D-MA, drives his car off a bridge and his young passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, dies.

1976 –- Nadia Comăneci of Romania becomes the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics during the Montreal Summer Olympics.

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On July 17 in …

180 –- Twelve inhabitants of Scillium, a city in the part of North Africa that today is Tunisia, are executed for being Christians. This is the earliest record of Christianity in that part of the world.

1762 –- Catherine the Great, born Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg in Germany, becomes the absolute ruler of Russia upon the murder of her husband, Peter III. She will rule until her death, at the age of 67, in 1796.

1902 -– Willis H. Carrier, a Cornell University engineering graduate, unveils drawings for what will be recognized as the world’s first true air conditioner. It controlled temperature, humidity, air circulation, and cleansed the air.

1917 — Reacting to anti-German sentiment during World War I, England’s King George V issues a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British Royal Family hereafter will bear the surname Windsor. It had been the rather unwieldy “Saxe-Coburg and Gotha,” reflecting the German paternal lineage of the royal rulers.

1955 –- The Disneyland amusement park is dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, CA.

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On July 16 in …

1661 –- The first banknotes in Europe are issued, by the Swedish bank Stockholms Banco.

1790 –- President George Washington signs into law the “Residence Act,” establishing an area known as the District of Columbia as the capital city of the United States. The federal government currently is located in New York City, but will move once office construction is completed in DC.

1861 — President Abraham Lincoln orders Union troops to begin a 25-mile march into Virginia for what will become known as the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major land battle of the Civil War.

1945 –- The “Atomic Age” begins when the U.S. government successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon in the desert near Alamogordo, NM. The test is part of the Manhattan Project that will help develop the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.

1973 –- During U.S. Senate hearings on what was nicknamed “Watergate,” former White House aide Alexander Butterfield reveals that President Richard Nixon has secretly recorded potentially incriminating conversations.

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