#onthisday. 1487 – Citizens of Leeuwarden, Netherlands strike against a ban on foreign beer.. 1701 – Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founds the trading post at Fort Pontchartrain, which later becomes the city of Detroit, Michigan.. 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Kernstown – Confederate General Jubal Early defeats Union troops led by General George Crook in an effort to keep them out of the Shenandoah Valley.. 1915 – The passenger ship S.S. Eastland capsizes while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. A total of 844 passengers and crew are killed in the largest loss of life disaster from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes.. 1923 – The Treaty of Lausanne, settling the boundaries of modern Turkey, is signed in Switzerland by Greece, Bulgaria and other countries that fought in World War I.. 1927 – The Menin Gate war memorial is unveiled at Ypres.. 1943 – World War II: Operation Gomorrah begins: British and Canadian aeroplanes bomb Hamburg by night, and American planes by day. By the end of the operation in November, 9,000 tons of explosives will have killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.. 1950 – Cape Canaveral Air Force Station begins operations with the launch of a Bumper rocket.. 1959 – At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev have a Kitchen Debate”.. 1967 – During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declares to a crowd of over 100,000 in Montreal: Vive le Québec libre! (Long live free Quebec!). The statement, interpreted as support for Quebec independence, delighted many Quebecers but angered the Canadian government and many English Canadians.. 1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 11 splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean.. 1974 – Watergate scandal: the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and they order him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.. 1980 – The Quietly Confident Quartet of Australia wins the Mens 4 x 100 metre medley relay at the Moscow Olympics, the only time the United States has not won the event at Olympic level.. 1983 – The Black July anti-Tamil riots begin in Sri Lanka, killing between 400 and 3,000. Black July is generally regarded as the beginning of the Sri Lankan Civil War.. 1990 – Iraqi forces start massing on the Kuwait-Iraq border.. 2001 – Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last Tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, is sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, becoming the first monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office.. 2011 – Digital switchover is completed in 44 of the 47 prefectures of Japan, with Iwate, Miyagi[disambiguation needed], and Fukushima television stations terminating analog broadcasting operations later as a result of the Tōhoku earthquake.. 2013 – A high-speed train derails in Spain rounding a curve with an 80 km/h (50 mph) speed limit at 190 km/h (120 mph), killing 78 passengers..
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 20:59:27 +0000
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