23rd July 1914: Austria-Hungary issues an ultimatum to Serbia specifically designed to be rejected and lead to war between the two countries
The ultimatum was delivered at 6pm on 23 July by the Austro-Hungarian ambassador to Belgrade, with a deadline of 48 hours within which the Serbian government had to respond. The accepted all but one of the ...
23 Jul 0s
22nd July 1793: Alexander Mackenzie becomes the first recorded person to cross North America north of Mexico
On 22 July, after travelling more than 3,000 miles, Mackenzie and his party reached the Pacific tidewaters at Dean Channel, near present-day Bella Coola, British ...
22 Jul 0s
21st July 1861: First Battle of Bull Run, the first major battle of the American Civil War, takes place in Virginia
Union troops, facing increasing resistance and mounting casualties, began to retreat in what soon turned into a disorganised ...
21 Jul 0s
20th July 1807: The world’s first internal combustion engine is patented in France
Napoleon granted a patent for the Pyréolophore to Nicéphore Niépce and his brother ...
20 Jul 0s
19th July 1545: The Mary Rose, a Tudor warship of the English navy, sinks in the Solent in full view of King Henry VIII
According to contemporary accounts, the Mary Rose had just fired a broadside at the French navy, and was turning when she keeled over and ...
19 Jul 0s
18th July 1938: ‘Wrong Way’ Douglas Corrigan lands in Ireland from New York, despite filing a flight plan to Long Beach, California
Corrigan later claimed that a navigational error, caused by a faulty compass and poor weather conditions, had led him to fly east to Ireland instead of west to ...
18 Jul 0s
17th July 1918: Russian Imperial Romanov family shot dead by Bolsheviks in the basement of the Ipatiev House in the city of Ekaterinburg
The Romanov family were all shot or stabbed by bayonets, and their bodies were taken away in a truck and disposed of in a forest twelve miles north of the ...
17 Jul 0s
16th July 622: Start date of the Islamic calendar
The Islamic calendar was dated to start with the first new moon after the Prophet Muhammad and his followers migrated to ...
16 Jul 0s
