What Happened on July 23rd in History
30 historical events on this date
The Sandinista National Liberation Front is founded 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,...
Telstar relays the first publicly transmitted, live trans-Atlantic television program, featuring Walter Cronkite.
Telstar is a series of communications satellites. The first two, Telstar 1 and Telstar 2, were experimental and nearly identical. Telstar 1 was launched atop a Thor-Delta rocket on July 10, 1962,...
The International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos is signed.
The International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos was an international agreement signed in Geneva on July 23, 1962, between 14 states, including Laos, as a result of the International Conference...
Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Jack Roosevelt Robinson was an American professional baseball player who was the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the color line when...
Detroit Riots: In Detroit, one of the worst riots in United States history begins on 12th Street in the predominantly African American inner city. It ultimately kills 43 people, injures 342 and burns about 1,400 buildings.
The 1967 Detroit riot, also known as the 12th Street Riot and the Detroit Uprising, was the bloodiest of the urban riots in the United States during the "long, hot summer of 1967". Composed mainly...
Glenville shootout: In Cleveland, Ohio, a violent shootout between a Black Militant organization and the Cleveland Police Department occurs. During the shootout, a riot begins and lasts for five days.
The Glenville shootout was a gun battle that occurred on the night of July 23–24, 1968, in the Glenville section of Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States. Gunfire was exchanged for roughly four...
The only successful hijacking of an El Al aircraft takes place when a Boeing 707 carrying ten crew and 38 passengers is taken over by three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The aircraft was en route from Rome, to Lod, Israel.
El Al Israel Airlines Ltd., trading as El Al is the flag carrier of the State of Israel. Since its inaugural flight from Geneva to Tel Aviv in September 1948, the airline has grown to serve almost...
Qaboos bin Said al Said becomes Sultan of Oman after overthrowing his father, Said bin Taimur initiating massive reforms, modernization programs and end to a decade long civil war.
Qaboos bin Said Al Said was Sultan of Oman from 23 July 1970 until his death in 2020. A fifteenth-generation descendant of the founder of the Al Bu Said dynasty, he was the longest-serving leader in...
The United States launches Landsat 1, the first Earth-resources satellite.
Landsat 1 (LS-1), formerly named Earth Resources Technology Satellite ERTS-A or ERTS-1, was the first satellite of the United States' Landsat program. It was a modified version of the Nimbus 4...
The Greek military junta collapses, and former Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis is invited to lead the new government, beginning Greece's metapolitefsi era.
The Greek junta or Regime of the Colonels was a right-wing military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. On 21 April 1967, a group of colonels overthrew a caretaker government a month before...
Phạm Tuân becomes the first Vietnamese citizen and the first Asian in space when he flies aboard the Soyuz 37 mission as an Intercosmos Research Cosmonaut.
Phạm Tuân is a retired Vietnamese Air Force fighter pilot and cosmonaut. He became the first Vietnamese cosmonaut, and the first person of Asian origin to be in space when he was launched aboard the...
Outside Santa Clarita, California, actor Vic Morrow and two children are killed when a helicopter crashes onto them while shooting a scene from Twilight Zone: The Movie.
Santa Clarita is a suburban city in northwestern Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a 2020 census population of 228,673, it is the third-most populous city in Los Angeles County,...
Thirteen Sri Lanka Army soldiers are killed after a deadly ambush by the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
The Sri Lanka Army is the oldest and largest of the Sri Lanka Armed Forces. The army was officially established as the Ceylon Army in 1949, though the army traces its roots back to 1881 when Ceylon...
Gimli Glider: Air Canada Flight 143 runs out of fuel and makes a deadstick landing at Gimli, Manitoba.
Air Canada Flight 143 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight between Montreal and Edmonton. On July 23, 1983, it ran out of fuel midway through the flight. The fuel gauge was not operating, and...
General Ne Win, effective ruler of Burma since 1962, resigns after pro-democracy protests.
Ne Win was a Burmese general and politician who served as Burma's head of government from 1958 to 1960 and again from 1962 to 1974; and also as head of state from 1962 to 1981. Ne Win was Burma's...
A Vatican commission, led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, establishes that limiting certain rights of homosexual people and non-married couples is not equivalent to discrimination on grounds of race or gender.
The Catholic Church, also called the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with an estimated 1.28 to 1.41 billion baptized members worldwide as of 2026. It consists of 24...
Abkhazia declares independence from Georgia.
Abkhazia, officially the Republic of Abkhazia, is a partially recognised state in the South Caucasus. It sits on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, at the intersection of Eastern Europe and West...
China Northwest Airlines Flight 2119 crashes during takeoff from Yinchuan Xihuayuan Airport in Yinchuan, Ningxia, China, killing 55 people.
China Northwest Airlines Flight 2119 (WH2119) was a domestic flight from Yinchuan Xihuayuan Airport, Ningxia to Beijing Capital International Airport, China. On July 23, 1993, the BAe 146-300...
Comet Hale–Bopp is discovered; it becomes visible to the naked eye on Earth nearly a year later.
Comet Hale–Bopp is a long-period comet that was one of the most widely observed of the 20th century and one of the brightest seen for many decades.
Digital Equipment Corporation files antitrust charges against chipmaker Intel.
Digital Equipment Corporation, using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan...
ANA Flight 61 is hijacked in Tokyo, Japan by Yuji Nishizawa.
All Nippon Airways Flight 61 was a scheduled domestic flight from Tokyo Haneda Airport in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan and was en route to New Chitose Airport in Chitose, Japan, near Sapporo. On 23 July 1999,...
Space Shuttle Columbia launches on STS-93, with Eileen Collins becoming the first female space shuttle commander. The shuttle also carried and deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Space Shuttle Columbia (OV-102) was a Space Shuttle orbiter manufactured by Rockwell International and operated by NASA. Named after the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe, and the...
Megawati Sukarnoputri was sworn in as the first female president of Indonesia following her predecessor's impeachment.
Diah Permata Megawati Setiawati Sukarnoputri is an Indonesian politician who served as the fifth president of Indonesia from 2001 to 2004 and the eighth vice president under President Abdurrahman...
Three bombs explode in the Naama Bay area of Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, killing 88 people.
The 2005 Sharm El Sheikh bombings were committed by Islamist group Abdullah Azzam Brigades on 23 July 2005 in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm El Sheikh, at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula....
The English-Irish boy band One Direction were formed while auditioning for the 2010 series of the British singing competition The X Factor.
One Direction, often shortened to 1D, were an English–Irish pop boy band formed in London in 2010. The group consisted of Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik. The...
A high-speed train rear-ends another on a viaduct on the Yongtaiwen railway line in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, China, resulting in 40 deaths.
High-speed rail (HSR) is a type of rail transport network utilizing trains that run significantly faster than those of traditional rail, using an integrated system of specialized rolling stock and...
The Solar storm of 2012 was an unusually large coronal mass ejection that was emitted by the Sun which barely missed the Earth by nine days. If it hit, it would have caused up to US$2.6 trillion in damages to electrical equipment worldwide.
The solar storm of 2012 was a solar storm involving an unusually large and strong coronal mass ejection that occurred on July 23, 2012. It missed Earth by a margin of roughly nine days, as the Sun's...
TransAsia Airways Flight 222 crashes in Xixi village near Huxi, Penghu, during approach to Penghu Airport. Forty-eight of the 58 people on board are killed and five more people on the ground are injured.
TransAsia Airways Flight 222 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight operated by TransAsia Airways from Kaohsiung, Taiwan, to Magong, Penghu Island. On 23 July 2014, the ATR 72-500 twin turboprop...
NASA announces discovery of Kepler-452b by the Kepler space telescope.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the United States' civil space program and for research in aeronautics and...
A wildfire in East Attica kills at least 102 people. It is the deadliest wildfire in the history of Greece.
A series of wildfires in Greece, during the 2018 European heat wave, began in the coastal areas of Attica in July 2018. 104 people were confirmed dead from the Mati fires. The fires were, at that...