On This Day: 23 July

Three hundred colonists leave Dieppe, bound for New France		1632
Sir Ferdinand Gorges, of the New England governing council, receives control of Massachusetts		1637
Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, lands on Eriskay with seven companions, at the start of the Jacobite uprising of this year		1745
The Kingdom of Prussia recaptures the city of Mainz from France		1793
Lord Kilwarden, Lord Chief Justice (of Ireland?) and his nephew murdered in Robert Emmet's abortive uprising in Dublin		1803
Napoleon's troops oppose those of Tsar Alexander I at the Battle of Mogilev		1812
Sir Thomas Maitland is appointed as the first Governor of Malta, transforming the island from a British protectorate to a de facto colony.		1813
US inventor William Austin Burt patents the typographer – a precursor to the typewriter		1829
Parliament approves the British North America Act – a.k.a. the Act of Union – abolishing the legislatures of Upper and Lower Canada and establishing the Province of Canada in their place		1840
Battle of Custoza (Italian wars of independence) begins		1848
Jewish Disabilities Removal Act passed, altering the Oath of Allegiance to allow Jews to sit in Parliament		1858
Alexandra Park opens in London's Muswell Hill		1863
Napoleon III appoints the Empress Eugenie as Regent of France		1870
The Boundary Treaty between Chile and Argentina is signed in Buenos Aires – laying the groundwork for nearly all of the current 5600–kilometre shared border, despite the largely unexplored nature of the lands that it divided		1881
US President Ulysses S. Grant dies of throat cancer		1885
John Boyd Dunlop applies for a patent on a pneumatic tyre		1888
The Ford Motor Company sells its first car		1903
Following the Young Turk Revolution, Ottoman Emperor Sultan Abdul Hamid II accepts a new constitution – strengthening the popularly–elected Chamber of Deputies, at the expense of the unelected Senate and the Sultan's personal powers		1908
The Austro–Hungarian government demands reprisals in Serbia after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand on 28 June. Historians disagree over the extent to which Serbia would accept Austria's proposals, but Austria would declare war five days later		1914
The Communist Party of China is established at the founding National Congress		1921
The Socialist and Communist parties of Catalonia merge to form the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia		1936
Germany's Blitzkrieg (Blitz) begins with an all–night raid on London		1940
The name of Britain's Local Defence Volunteers is changed to the Home Front		1940
Germany begins its offensives against Stalingrad and the Caucasus		1942
British destroyers HMS Eclipse and HMS Laforey sink the Italian submarine Ascianghi in the Mediterranean after she torpedoes the cruiser HMS Newfoundland		1943
Legal processes against Philippe Pétain, leader of the collaborationist regime in occupied France, begin		1945
King Farouk of Egypt is deposed by the Free Officers Movement, formed by Gamal Abdel Nasser and led by General Muhammad Neguib		1952
The Sandinista National Liberation Front is founded in Nicaragua		1961
Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame		1962
Telstar relays the first publicly transmitted, live trans–Atlantic television programme – featuring CBS's Walter Cronkite and NBC's Chet Huntley in New York, and the BBC's Richard Dimbleby in Brussels		1962
One of the worst riots in United States history begins in Detroit, on 12th Street in the predominantly African–American inner city. It would result in 43 deaths, 342 injuries, and the burning of about 1,400 buildings		1967
British cyclist Tommy Simpson dies while competing in the Tour de France		1967
In Cleveland, Ohio, a violent shootout between police and a Black Militant organization occurs, sparking a riot that would last for five days		1968
A Boeing 707, carrying ten crew and 38 passengers from Rome to Lod, Israel, is taken over by three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. This would be the first and only successful hijacking of an El Al aircraft		1968
Qaboos bin Said al Said becomes Sultan of Oman after overthrowing his father, Said bin Taimur. The extensive reforms and modernization programmes that he would initiate would end a decade–long civil war		1970
NASA, in collaboration with the US Geological Survey, launches Landsat 1 – opening a long–running programme of capturing images of the Earth to allow investigations into the effects of seasonality, climate cycles, and long–term trends in land–use change		1972
Greece's military junta resigns, and former Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis is invited to lead a new government		1974
Actor Vic Morrow, and two child actors, are killed when a helicopter crashes onto them while shooting a scene from Twilight Zone: The Movie near Los Angeles		1982
An Air Canada Boeing 767 makes an emergency landing on a former airfield at Gimli, Manitoba, after running out of fuel		1983
A government report into an alleged cluster of cancer cases around the nuclear plant at Sellafield, Cumbria, concludes that the unusually high incidence of the disease cannot be categorically linked to the plant		1984
Prince Andrew marries Sarah Ferguson in Westminster Abbey		1986
A Vatican commission, led by future pope Joseph Ratzinger, rules that limiting certain rights of homosexual people and non–married couples does not amount to discrimination on grounds of race or gender		1992
Abkhazia declares independence from Georgia		1992
Britain sends 1,200 troops to relieve the besieged Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, access to which has been controlled by Bosnian Serbs for the past three years		1995
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) files antitrust charges against chipmaker Intel		1997
HM Government announces the introduction of loans for university fees, as recommended by the Dearing Report		1997
Scientists at the University of Hawaii, led by Ryuzo Yanagimachi, announce in the science journal Nature that they have succeeded in producing three generations of cloned mice		1998
Eileen Collins becoming the first female astronaut to command a space shuttle mission		1999
Tiger Woods wins his first (British) Open Championship, becoming (at 24) the youngest player to win all four major titles		2000
Ministers of 180 countries, but not the USA, conclude final rules covering the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change
The body of a two–year–old boy is found drowned in a rock pool at Coppet Hall beach, Saundersfoot, Pembrokeshire. The boy's mother, an Afro–Caribbean woman from Birmingham, is arrested in the Carmarthen area. (She later pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was committed to a psychiatric hospital for an indefinite period.)		2002
James Gibson wins the world men's 50 metres breaststroke title – Britain's first individual world swimming champion since David Wilkie in 1975		2003
88 lives are lost when three bombs explode in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt's most popular diving and coastal resort		2005
Simon Cowell forms One Direction, during the seventh series of The X Factor (they would finish third)		2010
An unusually large solar storm, which could have caused trillions of dollars' worth of damages to electrical installations worldwide, misses Earth by nine days		2012
48 out of 58 people on board lose their lives, and five on the ground are injured, when a TransAsia Airways flight crashes at Penghu Airport in Taiwan, during a second attempt to land in bad weather		2014
NASA announces the discovery of Kepler–452b – the first potentially rocky "super–Earth" planet to be discovered orbiting within the habitable zone of a star very similar to the Sun – by the Kepler space telescope, whose purpose was to investigate such things		2015
102 lives are lost when East Attica is struck by Greece's deadliest ever wildfire		2018

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On This Day: 23 July