While many of us remember the “giant leap” that mankind made as Neil Armstrong planted his boots in the thick dust of the lunar surface thus beginning one of the great CT’s of all time, there were other events that happened on this day that were just as significant, if not for the world but for some small spot on this great “Blue Marble”.
In 1888, just 5 years after the massacre at Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull surrenders to the US Army
Five years after General George A. Custer’s infamous defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn, Hunkpapa Teton Sioux leader Sitting Bull surrenders to the U.S. Army, which promises amnesty for him and his followers. Sitting Bull had been a major leader in the 1876 Sioux uprising that resulted in the death of Custer and 264 of his men at Little Bighorn. Pursued by the U.S. Army after the Indian victory, he escaped to Canada with his followers.
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n 1873, in what would serve as a preview of the Battle of Little Bighorn three years later, an Indian military coalition featuring the leadership of Sitting Bull skirmished briefly with Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. In 1876, Sitting Bull was not a strategic leader in the U.S. defeat at Little Bighorn, but his spiritual influence inspired Crazy Horse and the other victorious Indian military leaders. He subsequently fled to Canada, but in 1881, with his people starving, he returned to the United States and surrendered.
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He was held as a prisoner of war at Fort Randall in South Dakota territory for two years and then was permitted to live on Standing Rock Reservation straddling North and South Dakota territory. In 1885, he traveled for a season with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show and then returned to Standing Rock. In 1889, the spiritual proclamations of Sitting Bull influenced the rise of the “Ghost Dance,” an Indian religious movement that proclaimed that the whites would disappear and the dead Indians and buffalo would return.
On December 15, 1890, Sitting Bull was shot and killed during a raid on his house. There are varied accounts of the incident but it was generally believed that it was his support of he “Ghost Dancers” was what precipitated the raid. Until 1953, Sitting Bull’s remains were buried at Fort Yates when they were re-interred Mobridge, South Dakota, where a granite shaft marks his resting place.
70 – Siege of Jerusalem: Titus, son of emperor Vespasian, storms the Fortress of Antonia north of the Temple Mount. The Roman army is drawn into street fights with the Zealots.
1304 – Wars of Scottish Independence: Fall of Stirling Castle – King Edward I of England takes the stronghold using the War Wolf.
1738 – North America: French explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de la Vérendrye reaches the western shore of Lake Michigan.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Peachtree Creek – Near Atlanta, Georgia, Confederate forces led by General John Bell Hood unsuccessfully attack Union troops under General William T. Sherman.
1871 – British Columbia joins the confederation of Canada.
1877 – Rioting in Baltimore, Maryland by Baltimore and Ohio Railroad workers is put down by the state militia, resulting in nine deaths.
1881 – Indian Wars:Sioux Chief Sitting Bull leads the last of his fugitive people in surrender to United States troops at Fort Buford, North Dakota
1885 – The Football Association legalises professionalism in football under pressure from the British Football Association.
1894 – The troops sent by Grover Cleveland to Chicago to end the Pullman Strike are recalled.
1898 – Spanish-American War: A boiler explodes on the USS Iowa off the coast of Santiago de Cuba.
1916 – World War I: In Armenia, Russian troops capture Gumiskhanek.
1917 – World War I: The Corfu Declaration, which leads to the creation of the post-war Kingdom of Yugoslavia, is signed by the Yugoslav Committee and Kingdom of Serbia.
1918 – World War I: German troops cross the Marne.
1921 – Air mail service begins between New York City and San Francisco.
1921 – Congresswoman Alice Mary Robertson became the first woman to preside over the US House of Representatives.
1924 – Teheran, Persia comes under martial law after the American vice-consul, Robert Imbrie, is killed by a religious mob enraged by rumors he had poisoned a fountain and killed several people.
1926 – A convention of the Southern Methodist Church votes to allow women to become priests.
1933 – Germany: Two-hundred Jewish merchants are arrested in Nuremberg and paraded through the streets.
1934 – Labor unrest in the U.S., as police in Minneapolis fire upon striking truck drivers, during the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934, killing two and wounding sixty-seven; Seattle police fire tear gas on and club 2,000 striking longshoremen, and the governor of Oregon calls out the National Guard to break a strike on the Portland docks.
1938 – The United States Department of Justice files suit in New York City against the motion picture industry charging violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act in regards to the studio system. The case would eventually result in a break-up of the industry in 1948.
1940 – Denmark leaves the League of Nations.
1940 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Hatch Act of 1939, limiting political activity by Federal government employees.
1942 – World War II: The first unit of the Women’s Army Corps begins training in Des Moines, Iowa.
1944 – World War II: Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt (known as the July 20 plot) led by German Army Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.
1944 – Franklin D. Roosevelt wins the Democratic Party nomination for the fourth and final time at the 1944 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.
1944 – An attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler at his Rastenberg headquarters is undertaken as part of Operation Valkyrie.
1945 – The US Congress approves the Bretton Woods Agreement.
1946 – World War II: The US Congress’s Pearl Harbor Committee says Franklin D. Roosevelt is completely blameless for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and calls for a unified command structure in the armed forces.
1948 – U.S. President Harry S. Truman issues a peacetime military draft in the United States amid increasing tensions with the Soviet Union.
1948 – In New York City, twelve leaders of the Communist Party USA are indicted under the Smith Act including William Z. Foster and Gus Hall.
1949 – Israel and Syria sign a truce to end their nineteen-month war.
1951 – King Abdullah I of Jordan is assassinated by a Palestinian while attending Friday prayers in Jerusalem.
1953 – The United Nations Economic and Social Council votes to make UNICEF a permanent agency.
1954 – Germany: Otto John, head of West Germany’s secret service, defects to East Germany.
1954 – At Geneva, Switzerland, an armistice is signed that ends fighting in Vietnam and divides the country along the 17th parallel.
1960 – Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) elects Sirimavo Bandaranaike Prime Minister, the world’s first elected female head of government.
1960 – The Polaris missile is successfully launched from a submarine, the USS George Washington, for the first time.
1960 – The Polaris missile is successfully launched from a submarine, the USS George Washington, for the first time.
1968 – Special Olympics founded.
1973 – The US Senate passes the War Powers Act.
1973 – Vietnam War: In testimony by Assistant Secretary of Defense Jerry Friedheim to the US Senate Committee on Armed Services, the US Defense Department admits it lied to US Congress about bombing Cambodia .
1976 – The Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars.
1976 – Vietnam War: The U.S. military completes its troop withdrawal from Thailand.
1976 – Hank Aaron hits his 755th home run, the final home run of his career.
1977 – Johnstown is hit by a flash flood that kills eighty and causes $350 million in damage.
1977– The Central Intelligence Agency releases documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind control experiments.
1980 – The United Nations Security Council votes 14-0 that member states should not recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
at 20:17 UTC on July 20.
1983 – The Israeli cabinet votes to withdraw troops from Beirut but to remain in southern Lebanon
1985 – The government of Aruba passes legislation to secede from the Netherlands Antilles.
1987 – UN Security Council Resolution 598, condemning the Iran-Iraq War and demanding cease-fire, is unanimously adopted.
1996 – In Spain, an ETA bomb at an airport kills 35
1998 – Two hundred aid workers from CARE International, Doctors Without Borders and other aid groups leave Afghanistan on orders of the Taliban.
1999 – Recovery, from 4.5 km down in the Atlantic, of the Liberty Bell 7 space capsule, which sank after Virgil Grissom’s July 21, 1961 suborbital flight.
2000 – The leaders of Salt Lake City’s bid to win the 2002 Winter Olympics are indicted by a federal grand jury for bribery, fraud, and racketeering.
2000 – Carlos the Jackal sues France in the European Court of Human Rights for allegedly torturing him.
2003 – France: Sixteen people are injured after two bombs explode outside a tax office in Nice.
2005 – Canada becomes the fourth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage, after the bill C-38 receives its Royal Assent.
2006 – Ethiopian invasion of Somalia Ethiopian troops enter Somalian territory.
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