July 20
1801 - A 1,235 pound cheese ball was pressed at the farm of Elisha Brown, Jr. The ball of cheese was later loaded on a horse-driven wagon and presented to U.S. President Thomas Jefferson at the White House.
1810 - Colombia declared independence from Spain.
1859 - Brooklyn and New York played baseball at Fashion Park Race Course on Long Island, NY. The game marked the first time that admission had been charged for to see a ball game. It cost $.50 to get in and the players on the field did not receive a salary (until 1863).
1861 - The Congress of the Confederate States began holding sessions in Richmond, VA.
1868 - Legislation that ordered U.S. tax stamps to be placed on all cigarette packs was passed.
1871 - British Columbia joined Confederation as a Canadian province.
1881 - Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull, a fugitive since the Battle of the Little Big Horn, surrendered to federal troops. (Montana)
1917 - The draft lottery in World War I went into operation.
1935 - NBC radio debuted "G-men." The show was later renamed "Gangbusters."
1942 - The first detachment of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, (WACS) began basic training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa.
1944 - An attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate Adolf Hitler failed. The bomb exploded at Hitler's Rastenburg headquarters. Hitler was only wounded.
1944 - U.S. President Roosevelt was nominated for an unprecedented fourth term of office at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
1947 - The National Football League (NFL) ruled that no professional team could sign a player who had college eligibility remaining.
1961 - "Stop the World, I Want to Get Off" opened in London.
1969 - Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. became the first men to walk on the moon.
1974 - Turkish forces invaded Cyprus.
1976 - America's Viking I robot spacecraft made a successful landing on Mars.
1982 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan pulled the U.S. out of comprehensive test ban negotiations indefinitely.
1985 - Treasure hunters began raising $400 million in coins and silver from the Spanish galleon "Nuestra Senora de Atocha." The ship sank in 1622 40 miles of the coast of Key West, FL.
1992 - Vaclav Havel, the playwright who led the Velvet Revolution against communism, stepped down as president of Czechoslovakia.
1998 - Russia won a $11.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to help avert the devaluation of its currency.
2003 - In India, elephants used for commercial work began wearing reflectors to avoid being hit by cars during night work.
