July 20




1801 - A 1,235 pound cheese ball was pressed at the farm of Elisha Brown, Jr. The ball of cheese was later loaded on a horse-driven wagon and presented to U.S. President Thomas Jefferson at the White House.

1810 - Colombia declared independence from Spain.

1859 - Brooklyn and New York played baseball at Fashion Park Race Course on Long Island, NY. The game marked the first time that admission had been charged for to see a ball game. It cost $.50 to get in and the players on the field did not receive a salary (until 1863).

1861 - The Congress of the Confederate States began holding sessions in Richmond, VA.

1868 - Legislation that ordered U.S. tax stamps to be placed on all cigarette packs was passed.

1871 - British Columbia joined Confederation as a Canadian province.

1881 - Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull, a fugitive since the Battle of the Little Big Horn, surrendered to federal troops.

1908 - In the United States, the Sullivan Ordinance bars women from smoking in public facilities.

1917 - The draft lottery in World War I went into operation.

1935 - NBC radio debuted "G-men." The show was later renamed "Gangbusters."

1942 - The first detachment of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, (WACS) began basic training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa.

1944 - An attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate Adolf Hitler failed. The bomb exploded at Hitler's Rastenburg headquarters. Hitler was only wounded.

1944 - U.S. President Roosevelt was nominated for an unprecedented fourth term of office at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

1947 - The National Football League (NFL) ruled that no professional team could sign a player who had college eligibility remaining.

1951 - Jordan's King Abdullah Ibn Hussein was assassinated in Jerusalem.

1961 - "Stop the World, I Want to Get Off" opened in London.

1969 - Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. became the first men to walk on the moon.

1974 - Turkish forces invaded Cyprus.

1976 - America's Viking I robot spacecraft made a successful landing on Mars.

1977 - A flash flood hit Johnstown, PA, killing 80 people and causing $350 million worth of damage.

1982 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan pulled the U.S. out of comprehensive test ban negotiations indefinitely.

1985 - Treasure hunters began raising $400 million in coins and silver from the Spanish galleon "Nuestra Senora de Atocha." The ship sank in 1622 40 miles of the coast of Key West, FL.

1992 - Vaclav Havel, the playwright who led the Velvet Revolution against communism, stepped down as president of Czechoslovakia.

1993 - White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster Jr. was found shot to death, a suicide, in a park near Washington, DC.

1997 - Seven people were arrested after New York City police found scores of deaf Mexicans kept in slave-like conditions and forced to peddle trinkets for the smugglers who had brought them to the U.S.

1998 - Russia won a $11.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to help avert the devaluation of its currency.

2003 - In India, elephants used for commercial work began wearing reflectors to avoid being hit by cars during night work.