29 Things That Happened on July 29th

#1. 1566. England executes a woman convicted of witchcraft. Joan, daughter of the widow Agnes Waterhouse, testified that she saw her mother turn a cat into a toad. A four-minute Monty Python skit lampoons the ignorance of the times.

#2. 1588. The Spanish Armada is defeated. The naval fleet that King Philip of Spain considered to be invincible had 130 ships and 2,500 guns. The Armada attacked the British fleet off the French coast between Calais and Dunkirk. Sir Francis Drake’s defeat of the Armada established England as a major naval power.

#3. 1715. Another blow for the Spanish fleet. A convoy of 11 treasure-filled galleons headed for Spain sank in a hurricane off the east coast of Florida, killing 1,000 sailors and scattering flotsam along 30 miles of beaches near today’s Vero Beach. The gold and silver would not be fully recovered until 250 years later.

#4. 1835. The first commercial sugar plantation was started in Hawaii. Ladd & Co. signed a 50-year lease for 980 acres of land on Kauai for $300 a year. Prior to this, most sugar cane grew wild and some families cultivated small plots.

#5. 1836. Paris inaugurates the Arc de Triomphe. Dedicated to the glory of the French Army, it is the home of France’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Twice a year, the sun sets directly in the center of the Arc at the end of the Champs-Élysées.

#6. 1874. Walter Copton Wingfield patented a portable tennis court. He was the founder of modern lawn tennis, which he wanted to call Sphairistike, Greek for ball-playing.

#7. 1890. Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh dies after shooting himself two days earlier. When the doctor examined the wound, he told the artist he thought he could save his life. Van Gogh is said to have replied, “Then I’ll have to do it over again.”

#8. 1899. The first motorcycle race was held in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, NY. The main event was the 25-mile tandem motorcycle race. The winners set an average speed record of 37.5 mph.

#9. 1907. The Boy Scouts are founded in England. In 2023, a United States federal district court judge approved a $2.4 billion bankruptcy plan to resolve the tens of thousands of child sexual abuse claims against the organization. In 2024, the Boy Scouts of America rebranded itself.

#10. 1914. The first transcontinental telephone call is made between New York City and San Francisco. The date is the result of a marketing ploy because the 2,445-mile-long telephone line had to be tested earlier to make sure it would work before Alexander Bell made his second famous call to Thomas Watson.

#11. 1920. Pancho Villa surrenders. The Mexican guerrilla leader was seen by many Mexicans as a champion of the underprivileged. Others said he was a ruthless, murdering bandido. The Frito Bandito character was based on him.

#12. 1933. Petty criminal Buck Barrow dies two days after being shot in the head by Des Moines police officers. Buck’s wife Blanche was injured while Bonnie and Clyde escaped, only to be killed less than a year later.

#13. 1921. Adolph Hitler becomes the Führer, leader of the Nazi party. By 1933, he was ruling the totalitarian state of Germany. The United Nations concluded the Nazis had killed 17 million Jews, Soviet civilians, Soviet prisoners-of-war, Non-Jewish Poles, Romanians, Serbs, disabled persons, beggars, vagrants, alcoholics, prostitutes, the unemployed, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and nonconformists.

#14. 1927. The first iron lung is installed at Bellevue Hospital, NY, the oldest public hospital in the United States. Before Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine in 1952, iron lungs were the only way thousands of paralyzed victims could breathe.

#15. 1928. Walt Disney creates the first synchronized sound cartoon. Steamboat Willie was selected in 1998 by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.

#16. 1957. The Tonight Show premieres on NBC with Jack Paar as the first host. The talk and variety show format was the same one used by Steve Allen in the first version of what would become known as The Late Show. Paar was kicked off the air by network censors when he told a long joke about a W.C. (water closet) and a woman who thought W.C. meant wayside chapel.

#17. 1958. NASA is established when US President Eisenhower signs into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act. The President’s Science Advisory Committee convinced all concerned that space held enormous military, scientific, and commercial potential.

#18. 1965. Help, the Beatles’ second movie, premieres in London with Princess Margaret and the Earl of Snowden in attendance. 20,000 adults and screaming teenagers jammed Piccadilly Circus. This musical parody of spy films was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and is now credited with being an influence on the development of music videos.

#19. 1967. The Doors’ Light My Fire hits #1 in the US. Their first and biggest hit was the anthem of the psychedelic and sexual revolutions. Frontman Jim Morrison died in a Paris bathtub from a heroin overdose.

#20. 1974. Eleven women known as the Philadelphia 11 broke ranks with the Episcopal Church. They were ordained as the first female Episcopal priests in defiance of Episcopal law. Two years later the church’s General Convention authorized the ordination of women to the priesthood.

#21. 1976. Son of Sam kills his first victim. David Berkowitz would shoot and kill five more people and wound seven others before being caught and claiming he was under the spell of a demon living in a dog’s body. The New York Legislature reacted by passing Son of Sam Laws aimed at preventing criminals from financially profiting from publicity related to their crimes.

#22. 1987. Ben & Jerry’s introduces Cherry Garcia ice cream. It was a tribute to guitarist Jerry Garcia and Grateful Dead fans everywhere. It’s the first ice cream named for a rock legend and the most famous of their fan-suggested flavors.

#23. 1991. Yankee Stadium fans throw objects at Oakland A’s outfielder Jose Canseco. Objects included baseballs, cups, cabbages, assorted debris, and an inflatable sex doll. Canseco had been accused of using steroids to get stronger, something banned by baseball. He denied any wrongdoing all the way up to the time he released his tell-all book admitting everything.

#24. 1994. Two hundred thousans Muslims demanded the death of fundamentalist Islam critic Taslima Nasrin for insulting the Muslim faith. An al-Qaeda assassination target, she fled from Bangladesh to the United States. If you’re looking for radical fundamentalists and violent extremists, your best bet is the Middle East.

#25. 2013. Forty-seven people were killed in a wave of car bombings in Iraq. Car bombings, suicide attacks, and other violence have killed 500 people since the first of the month.

#26. 2014. Forty-eight Gazans were killed by Israeli air strikes. This raised the number killed since the attack began three weeks ago to 336 and the number of wounded to 2,400. See what I mean?

#27. 2015. First double hand transplant at Children’s Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Eight-year-old Zion Harvey had his hands and feet amputated at the age of two and had a kidney transplant when he was 4. I cannot begin to fathom how incredibly difficult his life must have been.

#28. 2016. Hillary Clinton was nominated for the US Presidency by the Democratic party. Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders finished second. In the Presidential election, Dewey Defeats Truman — again.

#29. 2023. A pair of roundworms were revived from their cryptobiotic state after being frozen in Siberian permafrost for 46,000 years. Scientists say this prove that life can be stopped then restarted. Sure, if you’re a roundworm.

What do you think will happen this year?

Followup

A day later, I typed <news for july 29, 2024> in my search bar. Here are the top ten results:

Powerball for Monday, July 29, 2024 is $144 million
Meet the Press NOW
Powerball winning numbers
Olympic swimming schedule
PBS News Hour
Chinese zodiac signs likely to have good luck
MLB DFS Top Draft Kings, FanDuel daily picks
Police release name of victims in fatal Flint shooting
Did Sonny fall for John’s setup on General Hospital?
Daily horoscope