What Happened in July?

The Korean War ended with the signing of an armistice by U.S. and North Korean delegates at Panmunjom, Korea and establishing a demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. It brought to an end three years of fighting that killed 2.5 million people. No peace treaty was signed. More

Disneyland, in Anaheim, California, has its Grand Opening after a year of construction and a $17 Million investment. The opening was a special 'International Press Preview' event, which was only open to the six thousand invited guests. More

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announces that the United States had withdrawn its offer of financial aid to Egypt to build the Aswan High Dam on the Nile River. A project aimed at containing the annual cycle of floods and often droughts suffered in the valley from the river’s East African drainage basin for the previous 5,000 years. The announcement came shortly after the Soviet Union offered Egypt to finance the dam. Expand +

The Italian ocean liner, SS Andrea Doria and the Swedish liner MS Stockholm collide in the middle of a foggy night off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts. Both ships were traveling at high speeds despite the poor visibility. The Andrea Doria listed heavily after the collision, eventually capsizing and sinking the following day. Forty six passengers and crew members aboard the Andrea Doria and 5 crew members on the Stockholm died as a result of the collision and 1660 people were rescued. More 

Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the foreign-owned Suez Canal Company, which administered the canal and was owned primarily by British and French shareholders. On October 29, Israel invades the Egyptian Sinai. and on November 5, Britain and France landed paratroopers along the Suez Canal. Political pressure from the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Nations led to a withdrawal by the three invaders. The episode humiliated the United Kingdom and France and strengthened Nasser. It later became clear that Israel, France and Britain had conspired to plan the invasion. More

Two years after pushing to have the phrase “under God” inserted into the pledge of allegiance, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a law officially declaring “In God We Trust” to be the nation’s official motto. The law, also mandated that the phrase be printed on all American paper currency. The phrase had been placed on U.S. coins since the Civil War.

Dwight D. Eisenhower became the first US President to utilize a helicopter for official travel. Eisenhower took his first flight aboard a Bell H-13J Sioux helicopter from the White House lawn as part of a simulated nuclear alert exercise. This event marked a significant shift in presidential transportation, paving the way for the routine use of helicopters like Marine One for short-range trips. The decision to embrace this new mode of transport was driven by a desire for greater flexibility and efficiency in navigating Washington's traffic, as well as the need for rapid relocation in the event of a national emergency during the Cold War. More

Surgeon General Leroy E. Burney announces that the official position of the U.S. Public Health Service is that there is a causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer. His warning had little effect on cigarette consumption but it did elicit the ire of the Tobacco industry. Burney was an American physician and public health official and the eighth Surgeon General of the United States from 1956 to 1961.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is officially formed as its creation statute enters into force on July 29, 1957. The first General Conference was held in Vienna in October 1957, where delegates decided to make Vienna the agency's headquarters. The IAEA had been created via an independent statue and opened for signatures on October 26, 1956.  Expand +

President Eisenhower signs into law the bill passed by the U. S. Congress establishing NASA. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration began operations on October 1, 1958. More

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev accompanied Vice President Richard Nixon on a tour of the American National Exhibit, a fair sponsored by the United States to show the Soviet people how Americans lived. At the exhibit, with a team of journalists and photographers trailing them, the two leaders had a series of impromptu exchanges about the merits and flaws of their respective economies and political systems. One exchange took place during a visit to the model American kitchen featured in the exhibit which gave birth to the "Kitchen Debate" name. More

The Somali Republic is formed as a unification of the Trust Territory of Italian Somaliland, and British Somaliland. The independence day of Somalia is a national holiday observed annually in Somalia and the diaspora worldwide.

The Thresher (SSN-593) the first of a class of U.S. nuclear-powered attack submarines, is launched at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.  Expand +

The novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" by American author Harper Lee is published and becomes an immediate bestseller. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 and it is now widely recognized as a classic of modern American literature. The story is told from the perspective of a young girl and is set in the 1930's South. It explores themes of racial injustice and moral growth with its characters loosely based on Lee's observations of her family, her neighbors and an event that occurred in 1936 near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, when she was ten. Harper Lee died on February 2016 when she was 89 years old.

Burundi, officially the Republic of Burundi gains its freedom from Belgium. Burundi, a landlocked country in East Africa is located in the Great Rift Valley at the junction between the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa. It has a population of over 14 million people.

Rwanda gains independence from Belgium. Independence Day in Rwanda is a somewhat muted affair. Kwibohora, (July 4) is celebrated as Rwanda Liberation Day. On this day in 1994 the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) secured the capital of Kigali and ended the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

The Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear test is conducted by the United States as part of Operation Fishbowl. It involved detonating a 1.4 megaton nuclear warhead at an altitude of 250 miles (400 km) above Johnston Island in the Pacific. The test was designed in part to study the effects of nuclear explosions in the upper atmosphere and space, including the impact of the resulting electromagnetic pulse (EMP). The detonation created a large electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and radiation belts that damaged or destroyed approximately one-third of satellites in low Earth orbit, including AT&T's Telstar satellite. The EMP also caused electrical damage in Hawaii, disrupting streetlights, telephone networks, and burglar alarms. More

The U.S. Patent Office issued Patent No. 3,043,625 to “Nils Ivar Bohlin, Goteborg, (Volvo) for the three-point seatbelt. Volvo was so convinced of its safety potential safety that it made the patent available for other manufacturers, and motorists, to benefit from.

Telstar 1, a 171 pounds (78 kg) communications satellite is launched. One of the earliest communications satellites, it was the first to achieve live transmission of broadcast television images and telephone conversations  between the United States and Europe.  Telstar 1 remained active for only 7 months before it prematurely failed due to Starfish Prime, a high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States. The satellite remains in Earth orbit but is no longer operational. More 

U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act into law, outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. More