This day in history
Every day is full of amazing anniversaries, ancient and modern! As well as today, you can also look at any other day of the year - click the arrows to select the month, then click a number to select the day.
14 July
Events
- 1420: In the Hussite Wars, the extremist antipapal Taborites, led by John ika, defeat a crusading army led by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, King of Hungary and Bohemia, on the Vitkow, now Zika's Hill, outside Prague, Bohemia. The Four Articles of Prague defining the principles common to the Hussites are now published.
- 1544: King Henry VIII of England crosses to Calais, France, to campaign against King Francis I's forces in Picardy, in conjunction with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's invasion further east.
- 1789: A large crowd of the common people of Paris, France, (including some 5,000 women led by Throigne de Mricourt) storms and captures the Bastille (a medieval fortress, symbol of the ancien rgime) in Paris. The emigration of French aristocrats begins.
- 1790: A vast rally (the Fte de la Fdration) is held in the Champ de Mars, Paris, France, on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. King Louis XVI accepts the new constitution drawn up by the National Assembly.
- 1795: In France, La Marseillaise, originally written as a royalist rallying song, is adopted as the national anthem.
- 1798: The Alien and Sedition Act in the USA attempts to suppress press criticism of the US president and his administration.
- 1853: The first World's Fair, modelled on the Great Exhibition of London, England, in 1851, opens in New York.
- 1909: Bernhard von Blow resigns as German chancellor because of disagreements with Kaiser Wilhelm II and the naval programme, and is succeeded by Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg.
- 1933: All political parties other than the National Socialist (Nazi) Party are banned in Germany.
- 1958: Brigadier Abdul Karim Kassem mounts a coup in Baghdad, Iraq, and King Faisal II, his heir, and the prime minister Nuri-es-Said are murdered. King Hussein of Jordan assumes power as head of the Arab Federation.
- 1964: The French cyclist Jacques Anquetil becomes the first to win the Tour de France race five times, and also the first to win it for four successive years.
- 1965: The Australian runner Ron Clarke sets a new 10,000 metres world record time of 27 minutes 39.4 seconds, in Oslo, Norway, an improvement of 36.2 seconds on his existing record set in 1963.
- 1976: The ban on political parties in Spain is lifted.
- 1989: The LEP (Large Electron Positron Collider) is inaugurated at the CERN research centre in Switzerland; the new accelerator has a circumference of 27 km/16.8 mi and is the largest scientific apparatus in the world.
- 1999: The European Commission votes to formally end its ban on beef exports from Britain after veterinary officials reported that the epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is under control.
- 1999: The Ulster Unionist Party rejects a peace plan proposed by British prime minister Tony Blair and Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern and refuses to attend the meeting scheduled for the following day to set up a new cabinet in Northern Ireland. The party's refusal to attend the meeting blocks the formation of the cabinet.
- 2000: The film X-Men is released in the USA, directed by Bryan Singer, and starring Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen.
- 2001: The British Lions lose the third rugby union Test by 2923 and the series to Australia.
Births and Deaths
- Philip II
1223: Philip II, King of France 11791223, who reconquered French territories lost previously to England, dies in Nantes, France (57). - Jules Mazarin
1602: Jules Mazarin, cardinal, diplomat, and statesman, first minister of France 164261, born in Pescina, Abruzzi, Italy (1661). - Emmeline Pankhurst
1858: Emmeline Pankhurst, militant English suffragette, born in Manchester, England (1928). - Paul Kruger
1904: Paul Kruger, South African statesman who founded the Afrikaaner nation and was instrumental in initiating the Second Anglo-Boer War, dies in Clarens, Switzerland (79). - Gerald Ford
1913: Gerald Ford, 38th president of the USA (197477), a Republican, born in Omaha, Nebraska. - Ingmar Bergman
1918: Ingmar Bergman, Swedish film director, born in Uppsala, Sweden.
Data provided by Helicon Publishing
