1845 ~ The New York Yacht Club hosted the first American boating regatta.

1862 ~ David G. Farragut became the first rear admiral in the U.S. Navy.

1875 ~ The new French constitution was finalized.

1912 ~ Bradley A. Fiske patented the airplane torpedo.

1918 ~  Czar Nicholas II and his family were executed by Bolsheviks at Ekaterinburg, Russia. 

1926 ~ The first underwater color photographs appeared in "National Geographic" magazine. The pictures had been taken near the Florida Keys.

1935 ~ Oklahoma City became the first city in the U.S. to make use of parking meters.

1940 ~ Adolf Hitler ordered the preparations to begin on the invasion of England, known as Operation Sea Lion.

1942 ~ French police officers rounded up 13,000 Jews and held them in the Winter Velodrome. The round-up was part of an agreement between Pierre Laval and the Nazis. Germany had agreed to not deport French Jews if France arrested foreign Jews.

1945 ~ The United States detonated the first atomic bomb in a test at Alamogordo, NM.

1950 ~ The largest crowd in sporting history was 199,854. They watched the Uruguay defeat Brazil in the World Cup soccer finals in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

1957 ~  Marine Major John Glenn set a transcontinental speed record when he flew a jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds. 

1964 ~ Little League Baseball Incorporated was granted a Federal Charter unanimously by the United States Senate and House of Representatives.  

1969 ~ Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy, FL, and began the first manned mission to land on the moon.

1979 ~  Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq after forcing Hasan al-Bakr to resign.

1981 ~ After 23 years with the name Datsun, executives of Nissan changed the name of their cars to Nissan.

1985 ~ The All-Star Game, televised on NBC-TV, was the first program broadcast in stereo by a TV network.

1990 ~ An earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter Scale devastated the Philippines, killing over 1600 people.

1999 ~ The plane of John F. Kennedy Jr. crashed off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, MA. His wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, were also on board the plane. The body of John Kennedy was found on July 21, 1999

2004 ~ Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in prison for lying about a stock sale. She was also ordered to spend five months confined to her home and fined $30,000. She was allowed to remain free pending her appeal.

2005 ~ J.K. Rowling's book "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" was released. It was the sixth in the Harry Potter series. The book sold 6.9 million copies on its first day of release.