This Week in History: July 24th-30th

July 24- 1832: Benjamin Bonneville leads the first wagon train across the Rocky Mountains through Wyoming’s South Pass. The route became increasingly popular and was used extensively during the California Gold Rush in 1848. 1911: American explorer Hiram Bingham rediscovers Machu Picchu, the “Lost City” of the Inca civilization. 1959: Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev hold their “kitchen debate” at the American National Exhibition in Skolniki Park in Moscow, Russia. 2005: American Lance Armstrong wins his 7th consecutive Tour de France bicycle race and announces his retirement from competitive cycling. He was stripped of his titles in 2012 when the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency charged him with engaging in prohibited doping violations and conspiring to cover up his guilt.

July 25- 1943: Benito Mussolini is dismissed as Italian Premier and arrested by order of King Victor Emmanual III. 1946: Entertainers Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, who would long be known for their comedic performances, team up for the first time at the 500 Club in Atlantic City, NJ. 1965: Singer Bob Dylan is booed by some in the audience at the Newport Folk Festival for using an electric guitar during his performance. His creative use of musical technology is said to have marked the beginning of folk-rock. 1978: Louise Joy Brown, dubbed as the world’s first “test tube baby,” is born in Manchester, England, a result of the now common procedure known as in-vitro fertilization (IVF).

July 26- 1797: Future president John Quincy Adams marries Louisa Johnson in London, England. The bride’s mother was British and her father an American. She would be the first foreign born first lady in US history. 1896: The first permanent movie theater in the United States, Vitascope Hall, opens in New Orleans, LA. 1903: Horatio Jackson Jones and Sewall Crocker, along with their passenger Bud the Dog, arrive in New York City, completing the first cross country journey in the “new-fangled horseless carriage.” Their journey in a 20-horsepower Winton touring car had begun in San Francisco 63-and-a-half days earlier, and bolstered the belief that automobiles had a future in the United States. 1908: Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte orders immediate staffing of the Office of Chief Examiner, creating what would become known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

July 27- 1586: Sir Walter Raleigh brings the first tobacco from the “new world” to England. According to popular legend, a servant saw Sir Walter smoking a pipe for the first time and threw water on him, believing him to be on fire! 1789: The US Congress authorizes creation of the Department of Foreign Affairs, now known as the State Department. 1866: The first transatlantic telegraph cable arrives in Heart’s Content, Newfoundland (Canada) from Valentia Island, Ireland. 1940: Bugs Bunny debuts in “Wild Hare,” part of an animation series created by Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies. 1953: The armistice ending the Korean War was signed in Panmunjom, Korea.

July 28- 1794: French revolution leader Maximilien Robespierre is guillotined before a cheering crowd for his active role in the “reign of terror” that followed the revolution. 1914: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, triggering the start of World War I. 1945: 20-year-old Betty Lou Oliver falls 75 stories inside a free-falling elevator in the Empire State Building and survives. The “elevator girl” ended up in the basement of the world’s tallest building and had to be cut out of the mangled elevator car. She suffered a broken neck, back, and pelvis, but fully recovered, having three children, seven grandchildren and a long, full life, passing away in 1999 at the age of 74.

Betty Lou Oliver recovering from the accident, World War Wings

1976: The 8.2 magnitude Tangshan Earthquake in northern China kills more than 240,000 people, making it the deadliest quake of the 20th century.

July 29- 1715: 10 Spanish treasure galleons sink off the Florida coast during a hurricane. 1921: Adolf Hitler becomes the leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party. 1949: The Soviet Union ended its blockade of West Berlin, grudgingly accepting its failure in light of the United States’ hugely successful Berlin Airlift. 1981: Great Britain’s Prince Charles weds Diana Spencer at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. The lavish royal wedding was watched by a worldwide audience estimated to be in excess of 750 million viewers.

July 30- 1619: The Virginia House of Burgesses meets for the first time. It was the first elective governing body of the European colonists. 1930: Uruguay defeats Argentina 4-2 to win the first FIFA World Cup. 1935: Penguin Books publishes “Ariel” by André Maurois, the world’s first paperback book, starting what became known as the “paperback revolution.” 2003: The final old-style VW Beetle rolls off a Mexican assembly line.