Mariner 4 studies Martian surface

During the First Crusade, Christian knights from Europe capture Jerusalem after seven weeks of siege and begin massacring the city’s Muslim and Jewish population. Beginning in the 11th century, Christians in Jerusalem were increasingly persecuted by the city’s Islamic rulers, especially when control of the holy city passed from the relatively tolerant Egyptians to the […]

During Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, a French soldier discovers a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing, which becomes known as the Rosetta Stone.

On July 15, 1903, the newly formed Ford Motor Company takes its first order from Chicago dentist Ernst Pfenning: an $850 two-cylinder Model A automobile with a tonneau (or backseat). The car, produced at Ford’s plant on Mack Street (now Mack Avenue) in Detroit, was delivered to Dr. Pfenning just over a week later. Henry […]

John Christie, one of England’s most notorious killers, is executed. Four months earlier, on March 25, the police and a tenant at 10 Rillington Place in West London made an awful discovery: the bodies of four women in an empty apartment, three in a hidden cupboard and one more beneath the floorboards. Christie, who used […]

On July 15, 1966, 18 U.S. senators sign a statement calling on North Vietnam to “refrain from any act of vengeance against American airmen.” The number of captured American pilots was on the increase due to the intensification of Operation Rolling Thunder, the U.S. bombing campaign against North Vietnam that served as a core element of […]

On July 15, 1978, the “Longest Walk”—a 2,800-mile trek for Native American justice that had started with several hundred marchers in California in California—ends in Washington, D.C., accompanied by thousands of supporters. The intent of the event was to call attention to issues affecting Native Americans, such as a lack of jobs and housing, and […]

Columbia Records dropped Cash after more than a quarter-century.

The San Francisco-based podcasting company Odeo officially releases Twttr—later changed to Twitter—to the public. Over the next few years, Twitter exploded in popularity, becoming one of the world’s leading social networking platforms.