On July 26 in …

1267 — The Roman Catholic Church begins the infamous Inquisition under Pope Clement IV.

1788 — New York ratifies the Constitution, becoming the 11th member of the United States.

1944 — The Soviet Army enters Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, capturing it from the Nazis. Only 300 Jews survive out of 160,000 living in Lviv prior to occupation.

1947 — President Harry Truman signs into law the Security Act of 1947, thereby creating the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, Air Force, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.

1990 — The Americans with Disabilities is signed into law by President George Bush.

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.

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.”

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.