1619
The first legislative assembly in America, known as the House of Burgesses, is convened at Jamestown, Virginia.
1619
In Jamestown, Virginia, the first elected legislative assembly in the New World--the House of Burgesses--convenes in the choir of the town's church.
Earlier that year, the London Company, which had established the Jamestown settlement 12 years before, directed Virginia Governor Sir George Yeardley to summon a "General Assembly" elected by the settlers, with every free adult male voting. Twenty-two representatives from the 11 Jamestown boroughs were chosen, and Master John Pory was appointed the assembly's speaker. On July 30, the House of Burgesses (an English word for "citizens") convened for the first time. Its first law, which, like all of its laws, would have to be approved by the London Company, required tobacco to be sold for at least three shillings per pound. Other laws passed during its first six-day session included prohibitions against gambling, drunkenness, and idleness, and a measure that made Sabbath observance mandatory.
The creation of the House of Burgesses, along with other progressive measures, made Sir George Yeardley exceptionally popular among the colonists, and he served two terms as Virginia governor.
1619
In the first televised World Cup soccer match, host-nation England beats Germany 4 to 2 to win the tournament final at Wembley Stadium. In overtime play, England's Geoff Hurst scored his second of three match goals to give Britain a 3 to 2 lead. In the dying seconds of overtime play, he scored his third goal, making the score 4 to 2 and handing England the Jules Rimet Trophy for the first time in the World Cup's 36-year history. English star Bobby Charlton was marked on the field by German Franz Beckenbauer, an emerging talent who held the English midfielder to no goals. Hurst's second goal later stirred considerable controversy when film footage suggested that it failed to cross the goal line after bouncing off the crossbar.
1619
Under coercion from the U.S. Supreme Court, President Richard M. Nixon releases subpoenaed White House recordings--suspected to prove his guilt in the Watergate cover-up--to special prosecutor Leon Jaworski. The same day, the House Judiciary Committee voted a third article of impeachment against the president: contempt of Congress in hindering the impeachment process. The previous two impeachment articles voted against Nixon by the committee were obstruction of justice and abuse of presidential powers.
On June 17, 1972, five men, including a salaried security coordinator for President Nixon's reelection committee, were arrested for breaking into and illegally wiretapping the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C.'s Watergate complex. Soon after, two other former White House aides were implicated in the break-in, but the Nixon administration denied any involvement. Later that year, reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of The Washington Post discovered a higher-echelon conspiracy surrounding the incident, and a political scandal of unprecedented magnitude erupted.
On May 17, 1973, the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, headed by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, began televised proceedings on the rapidly escalating Watergate affair. One week later, Harvard Law professor Archibald Cox was sworn in as special Watergate prosecutor. During the Senate hearings, former White House legal counsel John Dean testified that the Watergate break-in had been approved by former Attorney General John Mitchell, with the knowledge of White House advisers John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman, and that President Nixon had been aware of the cover-up. Meanwhile, Watergate prosecutor Cox and his staff began to uncover widespread evidence of political espionage by the Nixon re-election committee, illegal wiretapping of thousands of citizens by the administration, and contributions to the Republican Party in return for political favors.
In July, the existence of what were to be called the Watergate tapes--official recordings of White House conversations between Nixon and his staff--was revealed during the Senate hearings. Cox subpoenaed these tapes, and after three months of delay President Nixon agreed to send summaries of the recordings. Cox rejected the summaries, and Nixon fired him. His successor as special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, leveled indictments against several high-ranking administration officials, including Mitchell and Dean, who were duly convicted.
Public confidence in the president rapidly waned, and by the end of July 1974 the House Judiciary Committee had adopted three articles of impeachment against President Nixon. On July 30, under coercion from the Supreme Court, Nixon finally released the Watergate tapes. On August 5, transcripts of the recordings were released, including a segment in which the president was heard instructing Haldeman to order the FBI to halt the Watergate investigation. Four days later, Nixon became the first president in U.S. history to resign. On September 8, his successor, President Gerald Ford, pardoned him from any criminal charges.
1656
Charles X of Sweden defeats a Polish army at the Battle of Warsaw - two days after invading Poland.
1818
On this day in 1818, novelist Emily Bronte becomes the fifth-born of the six Bronte children, three of whom will grow up to write fiction.
The Bronte family lived in the remote village of Haworth on the bleak Yorkshire moors and were largely left to their own devices after the death of their mother when Emily was two. A shy, reclusive child, Emily suffered intensely from homesickness whenever she left the parsonage. She joined her three older sisters at a school for clergymen's children when she was six, but the two oldest died, partly because of the school's harsh and unhealthy conditions. She and Charlotte returned home. The girls, along with sister Anne and brother Branwell, read voraciously and created their own elaborate stories about mythical lands. Many of Emily's poems were written about these imaginary realms.
Bronte was well educated at home and worked several short, unhappy stints as a governess and schoolteacher. In 1842, Emily and Charlotte went to Brussels to study school administration, hoping to open their own school in Haworth one day, which they never accomplished. In 1845, Charlotte came across some poems Emily had written and revealed that she too had secretly been writing verse. So had Anne, they learned. Charlotte published their joint work, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, in 1846. Although the book sold only two copies, the sisters continued writing. Jane Eyre appeared in 1847, an instant success. Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey were printed later that year. Unfortunately, neither one caught on with the public. Emily died of tuberculosis a year after her novel was published. A second edition of Wuthering Heights, published in 1850, included a preface by Charlotte, explaining that the book was superior to her o!
wn Jane Eyre. Wuthering Heights is now considered a classic.
1898
English sculptor Henry Moore is born in Castleford, Yorkshire, on July 30, 1898. The son of a coal miner, he overcame early criticism of his work to become one of the most acclaimed sculptors of the 20th century. His majestic, semi-abstract sculptures of the human figure are characterized by their smooth, organic shape and often include empty hollows that evoke form as meaningfully as solid mass.
The seventh of eight children, Moore grew up in the small coal-mining town of Castleford in northern England. His father was an ambitious man who taught himself advanced mathematics in order to rise from ordinary miner to the position of mining engineer. Moore decided he wanted to become a sculptor at age 11, after hearing a Sunday school story about Michelangelo. He served in France during World War I and in 1917 was injured in a gas attack. After being demobilized in 1919, he won a veteran's grant to study at the Leeds School of Art in West Yorkshire. In 1921, he was awarded a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in London.
At London's libraries and museums, he studied Egyptian, Etruscan, Pre-Columbian, Oceanic, and African sculpture, and he brought the vital spirit of this artwork into his early sculpture. This effort was often ridiculed by his instructors, and in his first year at the Royal College one of his teachers remarked, "this young man has been feeding on garbage." He was also deeply influenced by the semi-abstract paintings of Paul Cýzanne, such as the Large Bathers (1900-1905), which shows monumental reclining nudes integrated into an abstract landscape. The reclining human figure would become a central theme in Moore's sculpture.
After graduating from the Royal College in 1924, he traveled and taught art and in 1928 was given his first one-man exhibition at the Warren Gallery in London. Appreciated by his fellow avant-garde artists but lacking a wider public audience, Moore taught to support himself as he continued to develop his art. His first major mature work was Reclining Figure in Wood (1936), a highly abstract depiction of the human form. That year, Moore was included in the "Cubism and Abstract Art" show at New York City's Museum of Modern Art, which became an important patron of the English artist.
During World War II, Moore's studio was damaged by bombs, and sculpture material was difficult to come by. He turned to drawing and as a commissioned war artist produced a series of drawings of Londoners huddled in the underground bomb shelters. The Shelter Drawings (1940) seemed to capture the spirit of the times and brought Moore his first great fame. In 1946, he was given a major retrospective by the Museum of Modern Art, and in 1948 he won the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the 24th Venice Biennale. From thereon, Moore's reputation was firmly established, and he began to receive major public commissions for sculptures in bronze and marble.
In addition to the reclining figure, other common themes of Moore's sculpture includes the mother and child, family groups, and fallen warriors. Among his major commissions were sculptures for UNESCO headquarters in Paris (1957-58), for Lincoln Center in New York City (1963-65), for the University of Chicago (1964-66), and for the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (1978). For the last four decades of his life, he lived unostentatiously in a farmhouse in Much Hadham, 30 miles north of London. He died in 1986.
1935
Penguin' paperback books, founded by Allen Lane, first go on sale in Britain.
1936
On this day in 1936, author Margaret Mitchell sells film rights for Gone With the Wind to MGM. Although film magnate David O. Selznick of Selznick International Pictures had expressed interest in the rights earlier in the year, he had balked at Mitchell's asking price of $50,000-more than any studio had ever paid for rights to a first novel. He gave in, however, just before the book was released, and the deal was finalized on July 30, 1936.
The book went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and become one of the best-selling novels of all time. The film, which took three years, three directors, and 15 screenwriters to create, became one of the most profitable in history.
Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta in 1900. She became a journalist, reporting for The Atlanta Journal from 1922 to 1926. She married in 1925 and stopped working after a foot injury. She spent the next 10 years writing and researching the antebellum South and the Civil War in order to create Gone With the Wind. The book broke publishing records, selling one million copies within six months and more than 12 million copies during the next three decades. Mitchell never tried writing a sequel to the book, but in 1988 her estate sold sequel rights to Warner Books for nearly $5 million. The sequel, Scarlett, by Alexandra Ripley, was published in 1991 and topped the best-seller list despite a chilly response from critics.
After Selznick purchased the book's film rights, he launched a nationwide search for an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara--the search lasted for more than a year. Meanwhile, he agreed to let MGM distribute the film in return for permission to use MGM's star, Clark Gable, as Rhett Butler. Filming on the movie began in December 1938, but the Scarlett role still hadn't been cast. British actress Vivien Leigh visited the set on the day filming began; by the end of the month, she was cast as Scarlett.
The film debuted in Atlanta on December 15, 1939, and became an instant hit. The film was nominated for more than a dozen Oscars and won nine, including Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress (which went to Hattie McDaniel, the first black actress to win the award). The movie was digitally restored and the sound remastered for its 1998 re-release by New Line Pictures.
1936
Walt Disney releases his first cartoon in color. The cartoon, Flowers and Trees, was made in three-color Technicolor; Disney was the only studio that used the process for the next three years, because of an exclusive contract.
1936
Singing star and radio personality Kate Smith makes her last public appearance on this day in 1976. She sang her trademark number, "God Bless America," on a TV program honoring the U.S. Bicentennial. Smith launched her first radio show in 1931. From a 15-minute segment featuring Smith's singing, her program grew over the years to an hour-long variety show featuring music, drama, comedy, and human interest. The show launched performers like Abbott and Costello and introduced songs like Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," which Smith first sang on Armistice Day in 1938. Smith died in 1986.
1943
On this day in 1943, Adolf Hitler learns that Axis ally Italy is buying time before negotiating surrender terms with the Allies in light of Mussolini's fall from power.
Hitler had feared that such a turn of events was possible, if not probable. Hitler had come to Italy on July 19 to lecture Il Duce on his failed military leadership-evidence that he knew, even if he was not admitting, that both Mussolini and Italy were about to collapse, leaving the Italian peninsula open to Allied occupation. Despite a half-hearted reassurance from Mussolini that Italy would continue to battle on, Hitler nevertheless began preparing for the prospect of Italy's surrender to the Allies.
When Mussolini was ousted from power and arrested by his own police six days later. Hitler gathered Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Rommel, and the commander in chief of the German navy, Karl Doenitz, at his headquarters to reveal the plans of action he had already been formulating. Among them: (1) Operation Oak, in which Mussolini would be rescued from captivity; (2) the occupation of Rome by German forces and the reinstallation of Mussolini and his fascist government; (3) Operation Black, the German occupation of all Italy; and (4) Operation Axis, the destruction of the Italian fleet (in order to prevent it from being commandeered for Allied use).
Hitler's advisers urged caution, especially since it would require recalling troops from the Eastern front. The Allies had not made a move on Rome yet, and although Mussolini was under arrest, the Italian government had not formally surrendered. Germany had received assurances from Mussolini's successor, General Badoglio, that Italy would continue to fight at Germany's side. Then on July 30, Hitler read a message from his security police chief in Zagreb that an Italian general had confided to a Croat general that Italy's assurances of loyalty to Germany were "designed merely to gain time for the conclusion of negotiations with the enemy."
1945
World War II: US cruiser Indianapolis is sunk by a Japanese submarine - at least 800 crew are killed. The ship was returning to port after delivering nuclear material for making an atomic bomb.
1949
British warship HMS Amethyst escapes from China by sailing down the Yangtze River. The warship had been stranded for 3 months after Chinese Communists refused to agree its safe passage.
1963
Kim Philby, British intelligence officer and Soviet spy, flees Britain and is given political asylum in the USSR.
1964
At about midnight, six "Swifts," special torpedo boats used by the South Vietnamese for covert raids, attack the islands of Hon Me and Hon Ngu in the Tonkin Gulf. Although unable to land any commandos, the boats fired on island installations. Radar and radio transmissions were monitored by an American destroyer, the USS Maddox, which was stationed about 120 miles away.
The South Vietnamese attacks were part of a covert operation called Oplan 34A, which involved raids by South Vietnamese commandos operating under American orders against North Vietnamese coastal and island installations. Although American forces were not directly involved in the actual raids, U.S. Navy ships were on station to conduct electronic surveillance and monitor North Vietnamese defense responses under another program, Operation De Soto. The Oplan 34A attacks played a major role in events that led to what became known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. On August 2, North Vietnamese patrol boats attacked the Maddox, which had been conducting a De Soto mission in the area. Two days after the first attack, there was another incident that still remains unclear. The Maddox, joined by destroyer USS C. Turner Joy, engaged what were thought at the time to be more attacking North Vietnamese patrol boats. Although it was questionable whether the second attack!
actually happened or not, the incident provided the rationale for retaliatory air attacks against the North Vietnamese and the subsequent Tonkin Gulf Resolution. The resolution became the basis for the initial escalation of the war in Vietnam and ultimately the insertion of U.S. combat troops into the area.
1964
During his first overseas trip as president--which included stops in Guam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan, Romania, and Britain--Richard Nixon makes an unscheduled five-and-a-half hour visit to South Vietnam. On the South Vietnam stopover, Nixon met with President Nguyen Van Thieu to discuss U.S. troop withdrawals and later met with senior U.S. military commanders to discuss possible changes in military tactics. Nixon also visited U.S. troops of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division at Di An, 12 miles south of Saigon.
1966
England win football's World Cup - beating West Germany 4-2 in the final at Wembley Stadium in London. England forward Geoff Hurst becomes the only man to score a hat-trick in a world cup final.
1975
Thirty-five nations, called together by the United States and the Soviet Union, begin a summit meeting in Helsinki, Finland, to discuss some pressing international issues. The meeting temporarily revived the spirit of detente between the United States and Russia.
By 1975, the policy of detente--the lessening of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union--was slowly deteriorating. Richard Nixon, under whose administration detente began, had resigned from office in disgrace in August 1974. The collapse of South Vietnam in April 1975 left many Americans worried that the U.S. was losing the Cold War. In an effort to reawaken the policy of detente, President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger joined with the Soviet Union in calling for a multination summit in Helsinki in July 1975. Officially known as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the meeting was attended by the United States, the Soviet Union, Canada, and all European nations (except Albania, which continued to plot its own very independent, and confusing, foreign policy). On August 1, 1975, the summit attendees issued a "Final Act," outlining the broad agreements that had been reached at the conference. All signatories to the Final Act agreed to respect the state boundaries established after World War II and abide by the rule of international law. In addition, human rights were emphasized and all states agreed to protect the basic rights of their people. Finally, all nations agreed to pursue arms reduction treaties in the future.
The agreements reached at Helsinki gave a temporary jumpstart to the idea of detente, but in the years to come most aspects of the Final Act were disregarded or forgotten. Although the Soviet Union agreed to respect human rights, it savagely attacked human rights groups in Russia (known informally as the "Helsinki groups"). And discussion about arms reduction treaties disappeared and was not revived until the mid-1980s. On a positive note, however, the Helsinki agreements did establish a foundation for more fruitful U.S.-Soviet relations in later years. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev used the basic premises of the Final Act to pursue a number of diplomatic initiatives in the mid- and late-1980s, including dramatic breakthroughs in nuclear arms control.
1985
The Saturn Corporation announced that their first plant would be built in Spring Hill, Tennessee, on this day in 1985. In 1982, General Motors (GM) initiated a small car project code-named Saturn. Once the design was set a new idea was posed--that Saturn should become a unique factory experiment. In January 1985, GM announced Saturn as a subsidiary to function with relative autonomy from other GM divisions. The first Saturn car was driven off the assembly line in 1990. The company announced its "Saturn Philosophy," detailing a unique attitude towards manufacturer-dealer-customer relations as well as providing for a labor contract with the United Auto Workers (UAW), separate from GM's existing contract, in which Saturn employees were to have direct input into the management of the company. Saturn was an attempt to break down the historically vertical management structure of U.S. car companies. After its release, Saturn scored high marks with J.D. Power and Associates rankings of quality by consumers, setting an historic trend of customer satisfaction for the company. In May 1993, Saturn had its first profitable month, and in 1995 Saturn enjoyed record sales, expanding its operation to Japan. After a successful three-year stretch, 1998 saw Saturn's first year-to-year sales decline, dropping 9.9% in volume from 1997. The auto manufacturer announced that operation would cease, in order to reorganize inventory and respond to the downturn. That same year saw Saturn's unique labor contract suffer. After a bitter, hard-fought feud within the union membership, Saturn workers voted overwhelmingly to retain their original UAW contract rather than adopt the master contract used at other GM auto plants. Just a few months later, Saturn workers went on strike, protesting that the automaker had failed to live up to its promise to give workers a voice in the plant's operation and strategy.
1985
The last “classic” Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the production line at VW’s Puebla, Mexico, plant on this day in 2003. The car, part of the 3,000-unit final edition, was sent to a museum in Wolfsburg, Germany, where Volkswagen is headquartered.
Ironically, the car that became a symbol of flower-power Hippies in the 1960s and inspired Disney’s Herbie the Love Bug has its roots in Nazi Germany. In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler commissioned a design from Ferdinand Porsche for an affordable, efficient “people’s car.” After World War II, the Beetle’s popularity began to grow internationally and by 2002 over 21 million cars had been produced.
In 1977, however, the Beetle, with its rear-mounted, air-cooled-engine, was banned in America for failing to meet safety and emission standards. Worldwide sales of the car shrank by the late 1970s and by 1988, the classic Beetle was sold only in Mexico. Volkswagen decided to discontinue production of the classic bug in 2003 due to increased competition from other manufacturers of inexpensive compact cars. However, this event did not mark the end of the Beetle. In 1998, Volkswagen introduced a redesigned “new” Beetle, which resembles the classic version but is based on the VW Golf; the car is popular in the U.S. and abroad.
1989
General Jaruzelski is forced to step down after eight years as leader of the Communist Party in Poland.
1994
Jesse Timmendequas is charged with the murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka in New Jersey. Kanka's death inspired Megan's Law, a statute enacted in 1994 requiring that information about convicted sex felons be available to the public. Versions of Megan's Law have been passed in many states since her murder.
Megan had last been seen riding her bike outside her home in West Windsor Township, New Jersey, on July 28. Her parents found her bike on the front lawn and immediately began to search for her. The following day, her body was discovered in Mercer County Park. Jesse Timmendequas, who lived across the street from Kanka and had two prior convictions for sexual assault, was arrested.
In the aftermath of this horrible crime, Megan's parents lobbied state legislators for a new law, arguing that if they had known about Timmendequas' background they would have been able to protect their daughter. New Jersey and several other states passed laws following the public outcry. A database of all types of sex offenders is now accessible through a 900 number and CD-ROMs at police stations around the state.
Yet problems have arisen from Megan's Law. Apparently inspired by the circulation of flyers describing his previous sexual offense, Michael Patton committed suicide in July 1998. In addition, homosexuals who were prosecuted years earlier for consensual sex with adults must be registered in this database. People in some communities have driven sex offenders out of town, often using violence and illegal means. Evidence as to the ability of Megan's Law to actually protect children or deter crime was inconclusive in the first few years of its enactment.
1998
On this day in 1998, Hercules Inc., a modestly monikered specialty chemicals concern, forked over a tidy $2.4 billion in cash to acquire industry cohort, BetzDearborn Inc. The deal capped off Hercules' frantic quest to snag a large-scale partner who could bolster its product line. Hercules' acquisitive odyssey began in January of 1998, when it marshaled its forces for a hostile takeover of British-based Allied Colloids PLC; however, Ciba Specialty Chemicals topped Hercules' bid and ended up winning the Allied sweepstakes. Undeterred, Hercules cut a "modest" deal to acquire a paper chemicals company, Houghton International Inc., before setting its sights on BetzDearborn. Though the acquisition fulfilled Hercules' expansionist goals, and boosted its bottom line (the company's combined revenue in 1997 was reportedly in the $3.5 billion range), BetzDearborn did not come cheap: along with paying the $2.4 billion sticker price, Hercules also agreed to swallow up $700 million of the company's debts. These hefty figures caused more than a few raised eyebrows on Wall Street; as some analysts noted, Hercules had essentially paid $72 a share for the company, a 100 percent markup on BetzDearborn's trading price of 35-7/8.