On This Day 1712 to 1960

20th July

1712 – The Riot Act took effect in Great Britain.

1859 - American baseball fans were charged an admission fee for the first time. 1,500 spectators paid 50 cents each to see Brooklyn play New York.

1881 – Sioux Chief Sitting Bull led the last of his fugitive people in surrender to United States troops at Fort Buford, North Dakota.

1885 – The Football Association legalised professional football under pressure from the British Football Association.

1903 – Ford Motor Company shipped its first car.

1924 – Tehran fell under martial law after the American vice consul, Robert Imbrie, was killed by a mob enraged by rumours he had poisoned a fountain and killed several people.

1926 – A convention of the Methodist Church voted to allow women to become priests.

1928 – The Hungarian government issued a decree ordering Gypsies to end their nomadic ways, settle permanently in one place, and subject themselves to the same laws and taxes as other Hungarians.

1933 - Two-hundred Jewish merchants were arrested in Nuremberg, Germany and paraded through the streets.

1934 – In Minneapolis police fired upon striking truck drivers, wounding fifty. In Seattle police, led by the mayor, fired tear gas on and clubbed 2,000 striking longshoremen, and the governor of Oregon called out the National Guard to break a strike on the Portland docks.

1944 - Hitler survived another assassination attempt, when a bomb exploded in Rastenberg.

1949 – Israel and Syria signed a truce to end their nineteen-month war.

1951 - King Abdullah of Jordan was assassinated while attending Friday prayers in Jerusalem.

1957 - British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, made an optimistic speech telling fellow Conservatives that Britons had never had it so good'.

1960 – Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) elected Sirimavo Bandaranaike Prime Minister, the world's first elected female head of government.

1960 – Belgium defended its intervention in the Congo to the United Nations Security Council while the government of the Congo appealed to the Soviet Union to send troops to push back the Belgians. The governments of the United States and France and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization warn the Soviets to stay out of the dispute.


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