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On This Day in History July 20  1801 - A 1,235 pound cheese ball was pressed at the farm of Elisha Brown, Jr. The ball of cheese was later loaded on a horse-driven wagon and presented to U.S. President Thomas Jefferson at the White House.
1868 - Legislation that ordered U.S. tax stamps to be placed on all cigarette packs was passed. 1871 - British Columbia joined Confederation as a Canadian province. 1917 - The draft lottery in World War I went into operation. 1942 - The first detachment of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, (WACS) began basic training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa. 1944 -An attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate Adolf Hitler failed. The bomb exploded at Hitler's Rastenburg headquarters. Hitler was only wounded. 1944 - U.S. President Roosevelt was nominated for an unprecedented fourth term of office at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. 1969 - Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. became the first men to walk on the moon. 1976 - America's Viking I robot spacecraft made a successful landing on Mars. 1977 - A flash flood hit Johnstown, PA, killing 80 people and causing $350 million worth of damage.
1984 - Hank Aaron broke Ty Cobb’s record, as he appeared in the 3,034th game of his career.
1985 - Treasure hunters began raising $400 million in coins and silver from the Spanish galleon "Nuestra Senora de Atocha." The ship sank in 1622 40 miles of the coast of Key West, FL. 1992 - Vaclav Havel, the playwright who led the Velvet Revolution against communism, stepped down as president of Czechoslovakia.
1993 - White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster Jr. was found shot to death, a suicide, in a park near Washington, DC. 1997 - Seven people were arrested after New York City police found scores of deaf Mexicans kept in slave-like conditions and forced to peddle trinkets for the smugglers who had brought them to the U.S. 1998 - Russia won a $11.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to help avert the devaluation of its currency.
2003 - In India, elephants used for commercial work began wearing reflectors to avoid being hit by cars during night work.   | 
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