Saturday, July 23, 2011

23rd of July

There are 161 days remaining until the end of the year.  Here are some of the events that played out throughout history:

1793 - Prussia re-conquers Mainz from France, after an eighteen-week siege of the city.

1862 - Henry W. Halleck takes command of the Union Army.  He becomes General-in-Chief and will hold the position until replaced by Ulysses S. Grant in 1864.  Halleck is then relegated to chief of staff.

1885 - Ulysses S. Grant, famous Civil War general and 18th President of the United States, passed away at the age of 63.

1900 - John Babcock was born today.  He was the last known surviving veteran of the Canadian military to have served in the First World War.  He passed away in 2010 at the age of 109.

1903 - The Ford Motor Company sells its first car.

1914 - Austria-Hungary issues an ultimatum to Serbia demanding the allowance to determine who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand.  Serbia will reject those demands and Austria will declare war a few days later.

1918 - Baseball player and Hall of Famer Pee Wee Reese is born.  He played shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and is known for his support of teammate Jackie Robinson. 

1926 - Fox Film buys the patents of the Movietone sound system, this will allow recording sound onto film.

1936 - Don Drysdale, right-handed pitcher for the Dodgers was born today.

1942 - The Treblinka extermination camp is officially opened according to the records of the German Nazi Party.

1942 - The German offensives codenamed Operation Edelweiss and Operation Braunschweig are authorized to commence.  The former was a plan to control the Caucasus nad capture oil fields in Baku.  The latter was the advance in order to mobilize troops in order to take the Russian city of Stalingrad.

1948 - D.W. Griffith, American film director famous for his controversial and groundbreaking film The Birth of Nation, passed away at 73.

1962 - Telstar relays the first publicly transmitted live trans-Atlantic television program.  The program featured Walter Cronkite.

1967 - In Detroit, Michigan. one of the most violent riots breaks out on 12th Street, in the predominantly African-American inner city section.  It will leave 43 people killed, 342 injured, and over 1,400 buildings destroyed by fire.   

1973 - American figher ace in World War I and founder of Rickenbacker Motors, Eddie Rickenbacker passed away.  He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and had a verified 26 aerial victories.

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