365 Crete Earthquake followed by tsunami around the Eastern Mediterranean allegedly destroys Alexandria
1542 Pope Paul III begins inquisition against Protestants (Sactum Officium)
1831 Belgium gains independence from Netherlands, Leopold I made king
1866 Cholera epidemic kills hundreds in London
1911 Marshall McLuhan, Canadian writer (Medium is the Massage), was born in Edmonton, Alberta (d. 1980)
1940 Soviet Union annexes Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
1948 Cat Stevens [Steven Demetre Georgiou; Yusaf Islam], rock vocalist (Peace Train), born in London, England
1949 US Senate ratifies North Atlantic Treaty by a vote of 82-13 (NATO)
1951 Robin Williams, American actor and comedian (Mork & Mindy, Jumanji, Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting), born in Chicago, Illinois (d. 2014)
1960 Sirimavo Bandaranaike becomes the world’s 1st female head of state elected in modern times, as Prime Minister of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka)
1974 US House Judiciary approves two Articles of Impeachment against President Richard Nixon
1983 Polish government ends 19 months of martial law
1990 Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” is performed where the Berlin Wall once stood
1994 Tony Blair is declared the winner of the leadership election of the British Labour Party, paving the way for him to become Prime Minister in 1997
2005 Four terrorist bombers target London’s public transportation system, exactly two weeks after the July 7 bombings. All four bombs fail to detonate leading to the capture of all the bombers.
2008 Bosnian-Serb war criminal Radovan Karadžić is arrested in Serbia and is indicted by the UN’s ICTY tribunal
2011 NASA’s Space Shuttle program ends with the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-135
2017 White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer resigns after opposing appointment of Anthony Scaramucci
2018 India scraps tax on sanitary products after campaign by activists
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