This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
July 11 is the 192nd day of the year (193rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 173 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1789, Jacques Necker is dismissed as France’s Finance Minister sparking the Storming of the Bastille.
Necker was seen as the savior of France while the country stood on the brink of ruin, but his actions could not stop the French Revolution. Necker put a stop to the rebellion in the Dauphiné by legalizing its assembly, and then set to work to arrange for the summons of the Estates-General of 1789. He advocated doubling the representation of the Third Estate to satisfy the people. But he failed to address the matter of voting – rather than voting by head count, which is what the people wanted, voting remained as one vote for each estate. Also, his address at the Estates-General was terribly miscalculated: it lasted for hours, and while those present expected a reforming policy to save the nation, he gave them financial data. This approach had serious repercussions on Necker’s reputation; he appeared to consider the Estates-General to be a facility designed to help the administration rather than to reform government.
Necker’s dismissal on 11 July 1789 made the people of France incredibly angry and provoked the storming of the Bastille on July 14. The king recalled him on 19 July. He was received with joy in every city he traversed, but in Paris he again proved to be no statesman. Believing that he could save France alone, he refused to act with the Comte de Mirabeau or Marquis de Lafayette. He caused the king’s acceptance of the suspensive veto, by which he sacrificed his chief prerogative in September, and destroyed all chance of a strong executive by contriving the decree of 7 November by which the ministry might not be chosen from the assembly. Financially he proved equally incapable for a time of crisis, and could not understand the need of such extreme measures as the establishment of assignats in order to keep the country quiet. Necker stayed in office until 1790, but his efforts to keep the financial situation afloat were ineffective. His popularity had vanished, and he resigned with a broken reputation.
472 – After being besieged in Rome by his own generals, Western Roman Emperor Anthemius is captured in the Old St. Peter’s Basilica and put to death.
1302 – Battle of the Golden Spurs (Guldensporenslag in Dutch) – a coalition around the Flemish cities defeats the king of France’s royal army.
1346 – Charles IV of Luxembourg is elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
1405 – Ming admiral Zheng He sets sail to explore the world for the first time.
1476 – Giuliano della Rovere is appointed bishop of Coutances.
1576 – Martin Frobisher sights Greenland.
1616 – Samuel de Champlain returns to Quebec.
1735 – Mathematical calculations suggest that it is on this day that dwarf planet Pluto moved inside the orbit of Neptune for the last time before 1979.
1740 – Pogrom: Jews are expelled from Little Russia.
1750 – Halifax, Nova Scotia is almost completely destroyed by fire.
1776 – Captain James Cook begins his third voyage.
1789 – Jacques Necker is dismissed as France’s Finance Minister sparking the Storming of the Bastille.
1796 – The United States takes possession of Detroit from Great Britain under terms of the Jay Treaty.
1798 – The United States Marine Corps is re-established; they had been disbanded after the American Revolutionary War.
1801 – French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons made his first comet discovery. In the next 27 years he discovered another 36 comets, more than any other person in history.
1804 – A duel occurs in which the Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr mortally wounds former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.
1833 – Noongar Australian aboriginal warrior Yagan, wanted for the murder of white colonists in Western Australia, is killed.
1848 – Waterloo railway station in London opens.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Fort Stevens; Confederate forces attempt to invade Washington, D.C..
1882 – The British Mediterranean fleet begins the Bombardment of Alexandria in Egypt as part of the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War.
1889 – Tijuana, Mexico, is founded.
1893 – The first cultured pearl is obtained by Kokichi Mikimoto.
1893 – A revolution led by the liberal general and politician, José Santos Zelaya, takes over state power in Nicaragua.
1895 – The Lumière brothers demonstrate film technology to scientists.
1897 – Salomon August Andrée leaves Spitsbergen to attempt to reach the North pole by balloon. He later crashes and dies.
1906 – The Gillette-Brown murder inspires Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.
1914 – Babe Ruth makes his debut in Major league baseball.
1919 – The eight-hour working day and free Sunday become law in the Netherlands.
1920 – In the East Prussian plebiscite the local populace decides to remain with Weimar Germany
1921 – A truce is called in the Irish War of Independence; see Irish calendar.
1921 – Former U.S. President William Howard Taft is sworn in as 10th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the only person to ever be both President and Chief Justice.
1921 – The Red Army captures Mongolia from the White Army and establishes the Mongolian People’s Republic.
1922 – The Hollywood Bowl opens.
1930 – Australian cricketer Don Bradman scores a world record 309 runs in one day, on his way to the highest individual Test innings of 334, during a Test match against England.
1936 – The Triborough Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic.
1940 – World War II: Vichy France regime is formally established. Henri Philippe Pétain becomes Prime Minister of France.
1943 – Massacres of Poles in Volhynia.
1943 – World War II: Allied invasion of Sicily – German and Italian troops launch a counter-attack on Allied forces in Sicily.
1947 – The Exodus 1947 heads to Palestine from France.
1950 – Pakistan joins the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank.
1957 – Prince Karim Husseini Aga Khan IV inherits the office of Imamat as the 49th Imam of Shia Imami Ismaili worldwide, after the death of Sir Sultan Mahommed Shah Aga Khan III.
1960 – Independence of Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger.
1960 – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is first published.
1960 – Congo Crisis: The State of Katanga breaks away from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
1962 – First transatlantic satellite television transmission.
1971 – Copper mines in Chile are nationalized.
1972 – The first game of the World Chess Championship 1972 between challenger Bobby Fischer and defending champion Boris Spassky starts.
1977 – Martin Luther King Jr. is posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
1978 – Los Alfaques Disaster: A truck carrying liquid gas crashes and explodes at a coastal campsite in Tarragona, Spain killing 216 tourists.
1979 – America’s first space station, Skylab, is destroyed as it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.
1987 – According to the United Nations, the world population crosses the 5,000,000,000 (5 billion) mark.
1990 – Oka Crisis: First Nations land dispute in Quebec, Canada begins.
1995 – Over 8,000 Bosnian men and children (all Bosniaks) are killed by Serbian troops commanded by Ratko Mladic in Potocari near Srebrenica Bosnia and Herzegovina.
2006 – 209 people are killed in a series of bomb attacks in Mumbai, India.
* Bonfire Night, precursor to The Twelfth. (Northern Ireland)
* China National Maritime Day (People’s Republic of China)
* Christian Feast Day:
* Benedict of Nursia
* Olga of Kiev
* July 11 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
* Day of the Flemish Community (Flemish Community of Belgium)
* Gospel Day (Kiribati)
* Imamat Day (Ismailism)
* National Day of Commemoration, held on the nearest Sunday to this date. (Ireland)
* The first day of Naadam, also known as Revolution Day (Mongolia)
* World Population Day (International)
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