July 26
1469 Wars of the Roses: The
Battle of Edgecote Moor, pitting the forces of
Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick against those of
Edward IV of England, takes place.
1775 The office that would later become the
United States Post Office Department is established by the
Second Continental Congress.
1788 New York ratifies the
United States Constitution and becomes the 11th state of the United States.
1863 American Civil War:
Morgan's Raid ends; At Salineville, Ohio, Confederate cavalry leader
John Hunt Morgan and 360 of his volunteers are captured by Union forces.
1908 United States Attorney General
Charles Joseph Bonaparte issues an order to immediately staff the Office of the Chief Examiner (later renamed the
Federal Bureau of Investigation).
1943 - Basil and Eva Jagger have a son, whom they name Michael, he will go by the name 'Mick'.
1944 World War II: The Soviet Army enters
Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, capturing it from the Nazis. Only 300 Jews survive out of 160,000 living in Lviv prior to occupation.
1945 The
Labour Party wins the
United Kingdom general election of July 5 by a landslide, removing
Winston Churchill from power.
HMS Vestal is the last British Royal Navy ship to be sunk in the Second World War.
The United States Navy cruiser
USS Indianapolis arrives at Tinian with parts of the warhead for the
Hiroshima atomic bomb (
Little Boy).
1947 Cold War: U.S. President
Harry S. Truman signs the
National Security Act of 1947 into United States law creating the
Central Intelligence Agency,
United States Department of Defense,
United States Air Force,
Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the
United States National Security Council.
1953
Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful attack on the
Moncada Barracks, thus beginning the
Cuban Revolution. The movement took the name of the date:
26th of July Movement.
1971 Apollo program: Launch of
Apollo 15 on the first Apollo "
J-Mission", and first use of a
Lunar Roving Vehicle.
1989 A federal grand jury indicts Cornell University student
Robert T. Morris, Jr. for releasing the
Morris worm, thus becoming the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
1990 The
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is signed into law by President George H. W. Bush.
2005 Space Shuttle program:
STS-114 Mission: Launch of
Discovery, NASA's first scheduled flight mission after the
Columbia Disaster in 2003.
2006 - The guitar on which Sir Paul McCartney learned his first chords sold for £330,000 at an auction at London's Abbey Road Studios. The Rex acoustic guitar helped McCartney persuade John Lennon to let him join his band,
The Quarrymen, in 1957.
The final edition of
Top Of The Pops was recorded at BBC Television Centre in London. Just under 200 members of the public were in the audience for the show which was co-hosted by veteran disc jockey Sir
Jimmy Savile, its very first presenter. Classic performances from the Spice Girls, Wham, Madonna, Beyonce Knowles and Robbie Williams featured in the show alongside The Rolling Stones who were the very first band to appear on Top of the Pops on New Year's Day in 1964.
Births
1739 George Clinton (no, not
that one, this one was the 4th VPOTUS); 1856 George Bernard Shaw; 1875 Carl Jung; 1894 Aldous Huxley; 1895 Gracie Allen; 1903 Estes Kefauver; 1904 Edwin Albert Link (invented the flight simulator); 1909 Vivian Vance ('Ethyl Mertz' on
I love Lucy); 1921 Jean Shepherd (narrated & wrote script for
A Christmas Story); 1922 Blake Edwards; 1922 Jason Robards; 1923 Jan Berenstain (create
Berenstain Bears); 1923 Biff Elliot (first actor to portray 'Mike Hammer', in
I, The Jury); 1926 James Best ('Roscoe P. Coltrane'); 1928 Stanley Kubrick; 1929 Joe Jackson (Jackson Family patriarch, not the New Wave dweeb); 1940 Dobie Gray♪ ♫; 1941 Darlene Love♪ ♫; 1943 Peter Hyams; 1943 Mick Jagger♪ ♫; 1945 Helen Mirren; 1949 Roger Taylor

; 1956 Dorothy Hamill; 1957 Nana Visitor; 1959 Kevin Spacey; 1961 Gary Cherone♪ ♫; 1964 Sandra Bullock; 1965 Jeremy Piven; 1967 Jason Statham; 1973 Kate Beckinsale; 1973 Chris Pirillo (computer nerd); 1993 Taylor Momsen
Deaths
1533 Atahualpa; 1863 Sam Houston; 1925 William Jennings Bryan; 1932 Fred Duesenberg; 1952 Eva Perσn; 1971 Diane Arbus; 1984 Ed Gein; 1992 Mary Wells♪ ♫; 1995 George W. Romney (Mitt's father); 2004 William A. Mitchell (created Pop Rocks and Cool Whip); 2013 JJ Cale♪ ♫

, George P. Mitchell (hydraulic fracturing pioneer); 2015 Vic Firth

, Ann Rule