• 708 - Copper coins are minted in Japan for the first time (Traditional Japanese date: August 10, 708).
• 1189 - Ban Kulin wrote The Charter of Kulin, which became a symbolic "birth certificate" of Bosnian statehood.
• 1350 - Battle of Winchelsea (or Les Espagnols sur Mer): The English naval fleet under King Edward III defeats a Castilian fleet of 40 ships.
• 1475 - The Treaty of Picquigny ends a brief war between France and England.
• 1498 - Vasco da Gama decides to depart Calicut and return to Portugal.
• 1521 - The Ottoman Turks capture Nándorfehérvár, now known as Belgrade.
• 1526 - Battle of Mohács: The Ottoman Turks led by Suleiman the Magnificent defeat and kill the last Jagiellonian king of Hungary and Bohemia.
• 1533 - Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire: Inca emperor Atahualpa is executed in Cajamarca by the garrote by Spanish invaders known as Conquistadores.
• 1541 - The Ottoman Turks capture Buda, the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom.
• 1655 - Warsaw falls without resistance to a small force under the command of Charles X Gustav of Sweden during The Deluge.
• 1756 - Frederick the Great attacks Saxony, beginning the Seven Years' War.
• 1786 - Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.
• 1825 - Portugal recognizes the Independence of Brazil.
• 1831 - Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.
• 1833 - The United Kingdom legislates the abolition of slavery in its empire.
• 1842 - Treaty of Nanking signing ends the First Opium War.
• 1861 - American Civil War: US Navy squadron captures forts at Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina.
• 1862 - Second Battle of Bull Run
• 1869 - The Mount Washington Cog Railway opens, making it the world's first rack railway.
• 1871 - Emperor Meiji orders the Abolition of the han system and the establishment of prefectures as local centers of administration. (Traditional Japanese date: July 14, 1871).
• 1882 - Is the date attributed to the death of English Cricket and the origin of the legend of The Ashes. This is the date according to the mock obituary in The Sporting Times.
• 1885 - Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first motorcycle.
• 1895 - The formation of the Northern Rugby Union at the George Hotel, Huddersfield, England.
• 1898 - The Goodyear tire company is founded.
• 1907 - The Quebec Bridge collapses during construction, killing 75 workers.
• 1910 - Japan changes Korea's name to Chōsen and appoints a governor-general to rule its new colony.
• 1911 - Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, emerges from the wilderness of northeastern California.
• 1915 - US Navy salvage divers raise F-4, first U.S. submarine sunk in accident.
• 1918 - Bapaume taken by Australian Corps and Canadian Corps in the Hundred Days Offensive
• 1922 - Turkish forces set fire to Smyrna, in Asia Minor.
• 1930 - The last 36 remaining inhabitants of St Kilda are voluntarily evacuated to other parts of Scotland.
• 1943 - German-occupied Denmark scuttles most of its navy;Germany dissolves Danish government.
• 1944 - Slovak National Uprising takes place as 60,000 Slovak troops turn against the Nazis.
• 1949 - Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.
• 1958 - United States Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
• 1970 - Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, East Los Angeles, California. Police riot kills three people, including journalist Ruben Salazar.
• 1982 - The synthetic chemical element Meitnerium, atomic number 109, is first synthesized at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany.
• 1991 - Supreme Soviet suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.
• 1995 - NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces.
• 1996 - Vnukovo Airlines Flight 2801, a Vnukovo Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 crashes into a mountain on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, killing all 141 aboard.
• 1997 - At least 98 villagers are killed by the GIA in the Rais massacre, Algeria.
• 2003 - Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the Shia Muslim leader in Iraq, is assassinated in a terrorist bombing, along with nearly 100 worshippers as they leave a mosque in Najaf.
• 2005 - Hurricane Katrina devastates much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, killing more than 1,836 and causing over $115 billion in damage.
• 2007 - A United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident takes place at Minot Air Force Base and Barksdale Air Force Base.

Births