On This Day: 11 July

After being besieged in Rome by his own generals, Western Roman Emperor Anthemius is captured in St. Peter's Basilica and put to death		473
Byzantine emperor Michael I, under threat by conspiracies, abdicates in favor of his general Leo the Armenian, and becomes a monk (under the name Athanasius)		813
Baldwin IV, aged 13, succeeds his father Amalric I as King of Jerusalem – with Raymond III, Count of Tripoli, as regent and William of Tyre as chancellor. He died eleven years later, having suffered from leprosy since childhood		1174
A coalition of Flemish cities defeats the Count of Artois at the Battle of the Golden Spurs (Courtrai)		1302
Charles IV, Count of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia, is elected King of the Romans (effectively the heir to the Holy Roman Emperor)		1346
English adventurer Martin Frobisher sights Greenland		1576
Marlborough and Prince Eugene defeat the Duc de Vendome at the Battle of Oudenarde		1708
The dwarf planet Pluto passes inside the orbit of Neptune, for the last time before 1979 (according to calculations)		1735
A Papal bull condemns Jesuit toleration of Confucianism in China		1742
Captain James Cook sets sail from Plymouth on his last voyage to find the North West Passage		1776
The Marquis de Lafayette presents the Declaration of the Rights of Man to the French National Assembly, and Jacques Necker is dismissed as Finance Minister – sparking the Storming of the Bastille		1789
The United States takes possession of Detroit from Great Britain, under the terms of the Jay Treaty		1789
French astronomer Jean–Louis Pons observes the first of 36 comets that he would discover in the next 27 years – more than any other person in history		1801
Alexander Hamilton, former Secretary of the US Treasury, is mortally wounded in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr – against whom he had campaigned as unworthy of election as Governor of New York State. He would die the next day		1804
John Keats visits Robert Burns' birthplace at Alloway, Ayrshire, and composes the sonnet Written in the cottage where Burns was born		1818
London's Waterloo Station is officially opened		1848
Napoleon III and Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria sign the Treaty of Villafranca, ending the Second Italian War of Independence – a crucial step in the unification of Italy		1859
Massacre of Christians in Damascus ends		1860
In the Anglo–Egyptian War, the British fleet begins begins the bombardment of Alexandria		1882
The Mexican city of Tijuana is founded		1889
Japanese entrepreneur Kokichi Mikimoto creates the first cultured pearl		1889
The Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, demonstrate movie film technology to scientists		1895
Scientist Saloman Andrée and two fellow Swedes leave Spitzbergen in a doomed attempt to explore the Arctic by balloon		1897
Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (FIAT) is founded in Turin by Giovanni Agnelli		1899
Twenty–year–old textile worker Grace Mae Brown is drowned by her boyfriend Chester Gillette on Big Moose Lake, New York, after she told him she was pregnant. Her life would inspire Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel An American Tragedy		1906
Babe Ruth makes his Major League debut for the Boston Red Sox		1914
The Allenstien and Marienwerder regions of Prussia (Poland) vote in a plebiscite to remain as part of Germany		1920
The Irish War of Independence ends in a truce, after almost two and a half years of fighting		1921
Eric Liddell wins the Olympic 400 metres final in Paris, after refusing to run in the heats for the 100 metres (his favoured distance) on the Sunday		1924
German engineer and inventor Engelbert Zaschka flies his large human–powered aircraft about 20 meters at Berlin Tempelhof Airport without assisted take–off		1934
The Vichy regime is formally established, with Philippe Pétain as 'Chief of the French State'		1940
A former US packet steamer, renamed Exodus, leaves France with some 4,500 Jewish passengers, bound for British Mandatory Palestine. In an exercise directed by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, it would be boarded by British forces one week later, sailed into Haifa, and the passengers returned to France on other (more suitable) ships		1947
The Zairean province of Katanga declares itself independent under Prime Minister Moise Tshombe		1960
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is first published in the United States		1960
Telstar makes its first transmission from Maine to France		1962
US frogman Fred Baldasare becomes the first person to swim the English Channel underwater		1962
Chess's 'Match of the Century' begins in Reykjavik as Bobby Fischer challenges Boris Spassky for the world title. Fischer would win by 12½ points to 8½, briefly ending 24 years of Soviet domination and providing a huge boost to American morale as the Cold War continued		1972
123 of the 134 passengers and crew lose their lives when a Boeing 707 operated by the Brazilian airline Varig crashes on approach to Paris Orly Airport. The incident would lead to a ban on smoking in aeroplane toilets		1973
Chinese archaeologists announce the discovery of the 'terracotta army' near the ancient capital, Xian		1975
Gay News is fined £1,000 for blasphemous libel in a private prosecution brought by Mary Whitehouse, after publishing a poem suggesting that Jesus was gay (The love that dares to speak its name, by James Kirkup)		1977
216 Spanish and foreign tourists lose their lives when a tanker carrying liquid gas crashes and explodes at a campsite near Tarragona, on Catalonia's Costa Daurada		1978
The US space laboratory Skylab 1 (unoccupied for the last five of its six years in orbit) disintegrates and falls to Earth; debris is scattered across the southern Indian Ocean and Western Australia. (It was supposed to stay in orbit until the mid–80s, when the Space Shuttle would have come to its rescue)		1979
The Britannia Road Bridge over the Menai Straits is opened by the Prince of Wales		1980
All 119 passengers and crew lose their lives when a Boeing 737 operated by the Ecuadorean airline TAME crashes near the city of Cuenca		1983
A 78–day land dispute begins in Canada as police and Mohawk members of the First Nation community exchange fire at the town of Oka, Quebec		1990
All 261 passengers and crew lose their lives when a Douglas DC–8 operated by a Canadian company for Nigeria Airways crashes in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia		1991
Terry Fields, Labour MP for Liverpool Broadgreen since 1983, is sentenced to 60 days in prison for refusing to pay his poll tax		1991
During the Bosnian War, the Bosnian Serb army, under the command of Ratko Mladic, overruns lightly–armed Dutch peacekeepers and takes control of the United Nations "safe area" of Srebrenica. A twelve–day massacre of more than 8,000 Bosniaks, mainly men and boys, would ensue		1995
Nelson Mandela addresses the House of Commons		1996
The World Aids Conference in South Africa announces trials for a new HIV vaccine, developed at the universities of Oxford and Nairobi, which would begin in Oxford in August		2000
The Royal Family turns out in force for a thanksgiving service for the Queen Mother, who will be 100 on 4 August		2000
Christine Goodwin, a 65–year–old who was born male but has lived as a woman for 18 years, wins the right to be recognised as a woman and to be allowed to marry, at the European Court of Human Rights		2002
209 lives are lost in a series of co–ordinated bomb blasts on Mumbai's suburban train network. Suspicion falls on Islamic militant groups operating in Kashmir		2006
At least 74 lives are lost in suicide bombings at two locations in the Ugandan capital, Kampala		2010

You are here:

On This Day: 11 July