| July 20, 1944 | July 20, 1969 |
| • An attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate Adolf Hitler failed as a bomb explosion at Hitler's Rastenburg headquarters only wounded the Nazi leader. | • Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin , became the first men to walk on the moon as they stepped out of their lunar module. |
| July 21, 1925 | July 21, 1949 |
| • In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called Monkey Trial ends with John Thomas Scopes being convicted of teaching evolution in violation of Tennessee law. Scopes was ordered to pay a fine of $100, the minimum that the law allowed. In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a similar Arkansas law on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment. | • The U.S. Senate ratified the North Atlantic Treaty by a vote of 82 to 13. |
| July 22, 1933 | July 22, 1934 |
| • American Wiley Post becomes the first aviator to fly solo around the world when he lands his Lockhead Vega monoplane at Floyd Bennett Field in New York. Post completed the 15,596 mile journey in 7 days, 18 hours and 49 minutes. | • Outside Chicago's Biograph Theatre, notorious criminal John Dillinger - America's "Public Enemy No. 1" - is killed in a hail of bullets fired by federal agents. |
| July 23, 1967 | July 23, 1976 |
| • After police raided a black-owned nightspot, one of the worst riots in U.S. history breaks out on 12th Street in the heart of Detroit's predominantly black inner city. By the time it was quelled, 43 people were dead, 342 injured, and nearly 1,400 buildings had been burned. | • Members of the American Legion arrive in Philadelphia to celebrate the bicentennial of U.S. Independence. By August 2, 22 people were dead and hundreds connected to the gathering were experiencing pneumonia-like symptoms. Their ailment would come to be known as Legionnaires disease. |
| July 24, 1847 | July 24, 1979 |
| • After 17 months and many miles of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 Mormon pioneers into Utah's Valley of the Great Salt Lake and declares, "This is the place". | • A Miami jury convicted Theodore Bundy of first degree murder in the slayings of Florida State University sorority sisters Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy. |
| July 25, 1956 | July 25, 1969 |
| • At 11:10 p.m., 45 miles south of Nantucket Island, the Italian ocean liner Andrea Doria and the Swedish ocean liner Stockholm collide in a heavy fog. Fifty one passengers and crew were killed in the collision. | • A week after the Chappaquiddick accident in which Mary Jo Kopechne was killed, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., pleaded guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident, then went on television to address his constituents. |
| July 26, 1908 | July 26, 1947 |
| • The FBI is born when U.S. Attorney General Charles Bonaparte orders a group of newly hired federal investigators to report to Chief Examiner Stanley W. Finch of the Department of Justice. When the Department of Justice was created in 1870, it had no permanent investigators on its staff. At first, it hired private detectives when it needed federal crimes investigated. | • President Harry Truman signs the National Security Act, which becomes one of the most important pieces of Cold War legislation. The act created the Department of Defense, the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. |
| July 27, 1794 | July 27, 1953 |
| • Maximilien Robespierre, the architect of the French Revolutions Reign of Terror, is overthrown. As the leading member of the Committee of Public Safety, Robespierre encouraged the execution, mostly by guillotine, of more than 17,000 enemies of the Revolution. The day after his arrest, Robespierre and 21 of his followers were guillotined before a cheering Mob. | • The Korean War armistice was signed at Panmunjom, ending three years of fighting. |
| July 28, 1945 | July 28, 1976 |
| • A B-25 bomber crashes into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building, killing 14 people. One engine from the plane went straight through the building and landed in a penthouse apartment across the street. | • At 3:42 a.m., the worst earthquake in modern history occurs, flattening Tangshan, a Chinese industrial city with a population of about 1 million people. The earthquake, measuring between 7.8 and 8.2 magnitude on the Richter scale, killed an estimated 242,000 people. |