July 12




1096 - Crusaders under Peter the Hermit reached Sofia, Bulgaria. There they met their Byzantine escort, which brought them safely the rest of the way to Constantinople. by August 1.

1543 - England's King Henry VIII married his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr.

1690 - Protestant forces led by William of Orange defeated the Roman Catholic army of James II.

1691 - William III defeated the allied Irish and French armies at the Battle of Aughrim, Ireland.

1790 - The French Assembly approved a Civil Constitution providing for the election of priests and bishops.

1806 - The Confederation of the Rhine was established in Germany.

1862 - The U.S. Congress authorized the Medal of Honor.

1864 - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln witnessed the battle where Union forces repelled Jubal Early's army on the outskirts of Washington, DC.

1912 - The first foreign-made film to premiere in America, "Queen Elizabeth", was shown.

1931 - A major league baseball record for doubles was set as the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs combined for a total of 23.

1933 - A minimum wage of 40 cents an hour was established in the U.S.

1941 - Moscow was bombed by the German Luftwaffe for the first time.

1946 - "The Adventures of Sam Spade" was heard on ABC radio for the first time.

1954 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed a highway modernization program, with costs to be shared by federal and state governments.

1954 - The Major League Baseball Players Association was organized in Cleveland, OH.

1957 - The U.S. surgeon general, Leroy E. Burney, reported that there was a direct link between smoking and lung cancer.

1960 - The first Etch-A-Sketch went on sale.

1974 - John Ehrlichman, a former aide to U.S. President Nixon, and three others were convicted of conspiring to violate the civil rights of Daniel Ellsberg's former psychiatrist.

1982 - "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" broke all box-office records by surpassing the $100-million mark of ticket sales in the first 31 days of its opening.

1982 - The last of the distinctive-looking Checker taxicabs rolled off the assembly line in Kalamazoo, MI.

1984 - Democratic presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale named U.S. Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York to be his running mate. Ferraro was the first woman to run for vice president on a major party ticket.

1990 - Russian republic president Boris N. Yeltsin announced his resignation from the the Soviet Communist Party.

1993 - 196 people were killed when an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 on the Richter Scale struck northern Japan.

1998 - In Ballymoney, Northern Ireland, three young brothers were burned to death in an arson attack while they slept.

1998 - 1.7 billion people watched soccer's World Cup finals between France and Brazil. France won 3-0.

1999 - Walt Disney Co. announced that it was merging all of its Internet operations together with Infoseek into Go.com.

2000 - Russia launched the Zvezda after two years of delays. The module was built to be the living quarters for the International Space Station (ISS.)

2000 - A car bomb exploded in central Madrid injuring nine people. The attack was blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA.

2000 - The movie "X-Men" premiered in New York.