What Happened on July 19th in History
30 historical events on this date
World War II: Battle of Cape Spada: The Royal Navy and the Regia Marina clash; the Italian light cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni sinks, with 121 casualties.
World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major...
Field Marshal Ceremony: First occasion in World War II that Adolf Hitler appoints field marshals due to military achievements.
The 1940 field marshal ceremony was a promotion ceremony held at the Kroll Opera House in Berlin in which Adolf Hitler promoted twelve generals to the rank of Generalfeldmarschall on 19 July 1940....
World War II: The Second Happy Time of Hitler's submarines comes to an end, as the increasingly effective American convoy system compels them to return to the central Atlantic.
The Second Happy Time was a phase in the Battle of the Atlantic during which Axis submarines attacked merchant shipping and Allied naval vessels along the east coast of North America. The First...
World War II: Rome is heavily bombed by more than 500 Allied aircraft, inflicting thousands of casualties.
Rome, along with Vatican City, was bombed several times during 1943 and 1944, primarily by Allied and to a smaller degree by Axis aircraft, before the city was liberated by the Allies on June 4,...
Prime Minister of the shadow Burmese government, Bogyoke Aung San and eight others are assassinated.
Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and also referred to as Burma, is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has...
Korean politician Lyuh Woon-hyung is assassinated.
Lyuh Woon-hyung, also known by his art name Mongyang, was a Korean independence activist and reunification activist.
Opening of the Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland.
The 1952 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XV Olympiad and commonly known as Helsinki 1952, were an international multi-sport event held from 19 July to 3 August 1952 in...
The largely autobiographical novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh was published.
An autobiographical novel, also known as an autobiographical fiction, fictional autobiography, or autobiographical fiction novel, is a type of novel which uses autofiction techniques, or the merging...
Tunisia imposes a blockade on the French naval base at Bizerte; the French would capture the entire town four days later.
The Bizerte crisis occurred in July 1961 when Tunisia imposed a blockade on the French naval base at Bizerte, Tunisia, hoping to force its evacuation. The crisis culminated in a three-day battle...
Joe Walker flies a North American X-15 to a record altitude of 106,010 meters (347,800 feet) on X-15 Flight 90. Exceeding an altitude of 100 km, this flight qualifies as a human spaceflight under international convention.
Joseph Albert Walker was an American World War II pilot, experimental physicist, NASA test pilot, and astronaut who was the first person to fly an airplane to space. He was one of twelve pilots who...
Vietnam War: At a rally in Saigon, South Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Khánh calls for expanding the war into North Vietnam.
The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while...
Piedmont Airlines Flight 22, a Piedmont Airlines Boeing 727-22 and a twin-engine Cessna 310 collided over Hendersonville, North Carolina, USA. Both aircraft were destroyed and all passengers and crew were killed, including John T. McNaughton, an advisor to Robert McNamara.
Piedmont Airlines Flight 22 was a Piedmont Airlines Boeing 727 that collided with a twin-engine Cessna 310 on July 19, 1967, over Hendersonville, North Carolina, United States. Both aircraft were...
Chappaquiddick incident: U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy crashes his car into a tidal pond at Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, killing his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne.
The Chappaquiddick incident occurred on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, United States, sometime around midnight between July 18 and 19, 1969, when Mary Jo Kopechne died inside the car driven...
Dhofar Rebellion: British SAS units help the Omani government against Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman rebels in the Battle of Mirbat.
The Dhofar rebellion, also known as the Dhofar War, or the 9 June revolution, was a revolution that began in 1965 in the Dhofar region of the Arabian Peninsula against British imperialism and...
Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal is created.
Sagarmāthā National Park is a national park in the Himalayas of eastern Nepal that was established in 1976 and encompasses an area of 1,148 km2 (443 sq mi) in the Solukhumbu District. It ranges in...
The world's first Global Positioning System (GPS) signal was transmitted from Navigation Technology Satellite 2 (NTS-2) and received at Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at 12:41 a.m. Eastern time (ET).
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation...
The Sandinista rebels overthrow the government of the Somoza family in Nicaragua.
The Sandinista National Liberation Front is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto César Sandino,...
The oil tanker SS Atlantic Empress collides with another oil tanker, causing the largest ever ship-borne oil spill.
SS Atlantic Empress was a Greek oil tanker that in 1979 collided with the oil tanker Aegean Captain in the Caribbean, and eventually sank, having created the fifth largest oil spill on record and...
Opening of the Summer Olympics in Moscow.
The 1980 Summer Olympics, officially branded as Moscow 1980, were an international multi-sport event held from 19 July to 3 August 1980 in Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union. These were the final...
In a private meeting with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, French President François Mitterrand reveals the existence of the Farewell Dossier, a collection of documents showing the Soviet Union had been stealing American technological research and development.
Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. A member of the Republican Party, he became an important figure in...
In one of the first militant attacks by Hezbollah, David S. Dodge, president of the American University of Beirut, is kidnapped.
Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party with an active paramilitary wing that has been banned by the Lebanese government since March 2026, amid Israel's war on Lebanon. Hezbollah's...
The first three-dimensional reconstruction of a human head in a CT is published.
Michael W. Vannier is a radiologist in Chicago.
The Val di Stava dam collapses killing 268 people in Val di Stava, Italy.
The Val di Stava Dam collapse occurred on 19 July 1985, when two tailings dams above the village of Stava, near Tesero, Italy, collapsed. It resulted in one of Italy's worst disasters, killing 268...
United Airlines Flight 232 crashes in Sioux City, Iowa, killing 111.
United Airlines Flight 232 was a regularly scheduled United Airlines flight from Stapleton International Airport in Denver to O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, continuing to Philadelphia...
A car bomb kills Judge Paolo Borsellino and five members of his escort.
The via D'Amelio bombing was a terrorist attack by the Sicilian Mafia, which took place in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, on 19 July 1992. It killed Paolo Borsellino, the anti-Mafia Italian magistrate, and...
The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army resumes a ceasefire to end their 25-year paramilitary campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland.
The Troubles were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it began...
Guinean President Alpha Condé survives an attempted assassination and coup d'état at his residence in Conakry.
Guinea, officially the Republic of Guinea, is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Guinea-Bissau to the northwest, Senegal to the north, Mali to the...
Syrian civil war: The People's Protection Units (YPG) capture the city of Kobanî without resistance, starting the Rojava conflict in Northeast Syria.
The Syrian civil war was an armed conflict that began with the Syrian revolution in March 2011, when popular discontent with the Ba'athist regime ruled by Bashar al-Assad triggered large-scale...
Gunmen in Egypt's western desert province of New Valley Governorate attack a military checkpoint, killing at least 21 soldiers. Egypt reportedly declares a state of emergency on its border with Sudan.
New Valley is a governorate of Egypt. It is in the southwestern part of the country, in the south of Egypt Western Desert, between the Nile, northern Sudan, and southeastern Libya.
The Knesset passes the controversial Nationality Bill, which defines the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel.