Skip to main content

Neil Armstrong walks on moon

Born on This Day

Cormac McCarthy

1933 - 2023

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist whose sparse style explores themes of violence in "No Country for Old Men" and "The Road."

Sandra Oh

1971 -

Canadian American actress who gained fame on TV's "Grey's Anatomy" and "Killing Eve."

Carlos Santana

1947 -

Singer-songwriter known for his unique guitar playing and musical style blending rock, Latin, jazz and blues.

Cormac McCarthyWireImage

Sandra OhGetty Images for Tibet House

Carlos SantanaGetty Images

1923

JUL20

Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa dies in a hail of 40 bullets while driving through Parral, Mexico. He's buried the next day, but his grave will be dug up and his head stolen three years later.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on July 20th

Sitting Bull surrenders

Five years after Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer’s infamous defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Hunkpapa Teton Sioux leader Sitting Bull surrenders to the U.S. Army, which promises amnesty for him and his followers. Sitting Bull had been a major leader in the 1876 Sioux uprising that resulted in the death of Custer and 264 […]

Homesteaders murdered by Wyoming ranchers

Having made the mistake of homesteading on land previously controlled by a Wyoming cattle king, homesteaders Ella Watson and James Averell are accused of rustling and hanged. As the days of the open range cattle industry faded, conflicts between powerful western cattle barons and the homesteaders who were settling on “their” lands were inevitable. The […]

Assassination plot against Hitler fails

On July 20, 1944, Hitler cheats death as a bomb planted in a briefcase goes off, but fails to kill him. High-ranking German officials had made up their minds that Hitler must die. He was leading Germany in a suicidal war on two fronts, and assassination was the only way to stop him. A coup […]

President Truman issues peacetime draft

President Harry S. Truman institutes a military draft with a proclamation calling for nearly 10 million men to register for military service within the next two months. Truman’s action came during increasing Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union. Following World War II, the United States moved quickly to demobilize the vast military it had […]

Jan and Dean’s “Surf City” hits #1

On July 20, 1963, Jan and Dean’s song “Surf City,” reaches the top of the U.S. pop charts. Its immortal opening lyric “Two girls for every boy!” was a claim that wasn’t actually supported by the facts, but it helped create a popular image of California as a paradise of sun and sand and endless […]

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

President Nixon watches first lunar landing

On July 20, 1969, President Richard Nixon, along with millions of others, watches as two American astronauts walk on the moon. Later that evening, Nixon recorded succinctly in his diary “the President held an interplanetary conversation with Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin on the Moon.” America and the Soviet Union had been […]

Actor and martial-arts expert Bruce Lee dies at age 32

On July 20, 1973, the actor and martial-arts expert Bruce Lee dies in Hong Kong at age 32 from a brain edema possibly caused by a reaction to a prescription painkiller. During Lee’s all-too-brief career, he became a movie star in Asia and, posthumously, in America. Jun Fan (Bruce) Lee was born on November 27, […]

Viking 1 lands on Mars

On the seventh anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, the Viking 1 lander, an unmanned U.S. planetary probe, successfully lands on the surface of Mars. Viking 1 was launched on August 20, 1975, and arrived at Mars on June 19, 1976. The first month of its orbit was devoted to imaging the surface to […]

A flood hits Johnstown—again

A flash flood hits Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on July 20, 1977, killing 84 people and causing millions of dollars in damages. This flood came 88 years after the infamous Great Flood of 1889 that killed more than 2,000 people in the town. As they had in the first flood, the dams in the Conemaugh Valley failed, […]

A serial-killing couple is apprehended

Alton Coleman and Debra Brown are apprehended in Evanston, Illinois, after a particularly vicious two-month crime spree that left eight people dead and many more injured. Coleman had been added to the special eleventh slot on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List for actively dangerous fugitives. Coleman had a long criminal record before he met […]

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

“Die Hard” debuts, makes Bruce Willis a movie star

On July 20, 1988, Die Hard, an action film starring Bruce Willis as wisecracking New York City cop John McClane, opens in theaters across the United States. A huge box-office hit, the film established Willis as a movie star and spawned three sequels. Die Hard also became Hollywood shorthand for describing the plot of other […]

Aurora shooting leaves 12 dead, 70 wounded

On July 20, 2012, a mass shooting occurs at a movie theater in Aurora, a Denver suburb, killing 12 people—the youngest a 6-year-old girl—and injuring at least 70 others. The Aurora shooting took place shortly after the start of a crowded midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises, which opened across the United States that […]

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement