July 5 in History

Constantine's Bridge (Latin: Pons per Danuvium Ductus, Bulgarian: Константинов мост, Konstantinov most; Romanian: Podul lui Constantin cel Mare) was a Roman bridge over the Danube used to reconquer Dacia. It was completed in 328 AD and remained in use for four decades. It was officially opened on 5 July 328 AD in the presence of emperor Constantine the Great. With an overall length of 2,434 metres (7,986 ft), 1,137 metres (3,730 ft) of which spanned the Danube's riverbed, Constantine's Bridge was the longest ancient river bridge and one of the longest of all time.

The 1292–94 papal election (from 5 April 1292 to 5 July 1294), was the last papal election which did not take the form of a papal conclave (in which the electors are locked in seclusion cum clave—Latin for "with a key"—and not permitted to leave until a new Bishop of Rome has been elected). After the death of Pope Nicholas IV on 4 April 1292, the eleven surviving cardinals (a twelfth died during the sede vacante) deliberated for more than two years before electing the third of six non-cardinals to be elected pope during the Late Middle Ages: Pietro Angelerio da Morrone, who took the name Pope Celestine V. Contemporary sources suggest that Morrone was hesitant to accept his election when word of the cardinals' decision reached his mountain-top hermitage. His ascetic life left him largely unprepared for the day-to-day responsibilities of the papacy, and he quickly fell under the influence of the Neapolitan monarchy of Charles of Anjou, to the dissatisfaction of even the pro-Angevin cardinals within the College. Celestine V resigned on 13 December 1294.

The Duchy of Burgundy was a medieval and early modern feudal polity in north-western regions of historical Burgundy. It belonged to the Kingdom of France, and was initially bordering the Kingdom of Burgundy to the east and south, thus being distinct from the neighboring Free County of Burgundy. The first duke of Burgundy, attested in sources by that title, was Richard the Justiciar in 918.

Mehmed I (Turkish: I. Mehmed; c. 1386/87 – 26 May 1421), also known as Mehmed Çelebi (Ottoman Turkish: چلبی محمد, "the noble-born") or Kirişçi (Greek: Κυριτζής, romanized: Kyritzis, "lord's son"), was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1413 to 1421. Son of Sultan Bayezid I and his concubine Devlet Hatun, he fought with his brothers over control of the Ottoman realm in the Ottoman Interregnum (1402–1413). Starting from the province of Rûm he managed to bring first Anatolia and then the European territories (Rumelia) under his control, reuniting the Ottoman state by 1413, and ruling it until his death in 1421. Called "The Restorer", he reestablished central authority in Anatolia, and he expanded the Ottoman presence in Europe through the conquest of Dobruja in 1419. Venice destroyed his fleet off Gallipoli in 1416 when the Ottomans lost a naval war.

The Pontifical Maronite College (Italian: Pontificio Collegio dei Maroniti) is one of the Roman Colleges of the Catholic Church. Founded originally in 1584 in order to educate Maronite priests, the college provides now higher education to priests from also other Eastern denominations and serves as the pastoral mission for the adjacent church of St Maron and the Procuracy of the Patriarchate of Antioch of the Maronites to the Holy See.

The Portuguese Empire was the first and longest lasting of the European colonial empires. Initiated during the Age of Discovery, at one point territories included parts of the Americas and Africa, along with ports and trading posts throughout Asia and Oceania.

John Guy was an English merchant, explorer, and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1621 to 1624. He was the first proprietary governor of Newfoundland Colony, the second attempt to establish a colony on Newfoundland.

The term Cavalier was first used to describe cavalrymen, and later by Roundheads as a term of abuse for the wealthier royalist supporters of Charles I of England and his son Charles II during the English Civil War, the Interregnum, and the Restoration. It was later adopted by the Royalists themselves. Although it referred originally to political and social attitudes and behaviour, of which clothing was a very small part, it has subsequently become strongly identified with the fashionable clothing of the court at the time. Prince Rupert, commander of much of Charles I's cavalry, is often considered to be an archetypal Cavalier.

Sir Isaac Newton ( ; 4 January 1643 [O.S. 25 December 1642] – 31 March 1727 [O.S. 20 March 1726]) was an English polymath who was a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, historian and inventor. He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687, achieved the first great unification in physics and established classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with the German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for formulating infinitesimal calculus, although he developed calculus years before Leibniz. Newton contributed to and refined the scientific method, and his work is considered the most influential in bringing forth modern science. In the Principia, Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint for centuries until it was superseded by the theory of relativity. While this is the case, his laws still serve as sufficient approximations for all physical phenomena involving low speeds (much less than the speed of light) and weak gravitational fields. He used his mathematical description of gravity to derive Kepler's laws of planetary motion, account for tides, the trajectories of comets, the precession of the equinoxes and other phenomena, eradicating doubt about the Solar System's heliocentricity. Newton solved the two-body problem and introduced the three-body problem. He demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and celestial bodies could be accounted for by the same principles. Newton's inference that the Earth is an oblate spheroid was subsequently confirmed by the geodetic measurements of Pierre Louis Maupertuis, Alexis Clairaut, Charles Marie de La Condamine, and others, convincing most European scientists of the superiority of Newtonian mechanics over earlier systems. He was also the first to calculate the age of Earth by experiment, and described a precursor to the modern wind tunnel. Further, he was the first to provide a quantitative estimate of the solar mass. Newton built the first reflecting telescope and developed a sophisticated theory of colour based on the observation that a prism separates white light into the colours of the visible spectrum. His work on light was collected in his book Opticks, published in 1704. He originated prisms as beam expanders and multiple-prism arrays, which would later become integral to the development of tunable lasers. Newton also formulated an empirical law of cooling, which was the first heat transfer formulation and serves as the formal basis of convective heat transfer, made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound, and introduced the notions of a Newtonian fluid and a black body. He was also the first to explain the Magnus effect. Moreover, he was the first to analyse Couette flow. In addition to his creation of calculus, Newton's work on mathematics was extensive. He generalised the binomial theorem to any real number, introduced the Puiseux series, was the first to state Bézout's theorem, classified most of the cubic plane curves, contributed to the study of Cremona transformations, developed a method for approximating the roots of a function, originated the Newton–Cotes formulas used for numerical integration, and further produced the earliest explicit enunciation of the general Taylor series. Additionally, Newton initiated the field of calculus of variations, formulated and solved the earliest problem in geometric probability, devised the earliest form of linear regression, and was a pioneer of vector analysis. Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge; he was appointed at the age of 26. He was a devout but unorthodox Christian who privately rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. He refused to take holy orders in the Church of England, unlike most members of the Cambridge faculty of the day. Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences, Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of alchemy and biblical chronology, but most of his work in those areas remained unpublished until long after his death. Politically and personally tied to the Whigs, Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, in 1689–1690 and 1701–1702. He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden (1696–1699) and Master (1699–1727) of the Royal Mint, in which he increased the accuracy and security of British coinage. He was also the president of the Royal Society (1703–1727). He died at the age of 84 and was the first scientist to be buried at Westminster Abbey.

The Battle of Chesma (also known as the Battle of Chesme, Battle of Cheshme or Battle of Cesme Bay) took place on 5–7 July 1770 in and near Çeşme, in the area between the western tip of Anatolia and the island of Chios, which was the site of a number of past naval battles between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Venice. It was a part of the Orlov revolt of 1770, a precursor to the later Greek War of Independence (1821–1829), and the first of a number of disastrous fleet battles for the Ottomans against Russia. Today it is commemorated as a Day of Military Honour in Russia.

The Second Continental Congress (1775–1781) was the meeting of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that united in support of the American Revolution and Revolutionary War, which established American independence from Great Britain. The Congress constituted a new federation that it first named the United Colonies of North America, and in 1776, renamed the United States of America. The Congress began convening in present-day Independence Hall in Philadelphia, on May 10, 1775, with representatives from 12 of the 13 colonies, following the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the Revolutionary War, which were fought on April 19, 1775. The Second Continental Congress succeeded the First Continental Congress, which met from September 5 to October 26, 1774, also in Philadelphia. The Second Congress functioned as the de facto federation government at the outset of the Revolutionary War by raising militias, directing strategy, appointing diplomats, and writing petitions such as the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms and the Olive Branch Petition. All 13 colonies were represented by the time the Congress adopted the Lee Resolution, which declared independence from Great Britain on July 2, 1776, and the Congress unanimously agreed to the Declaration of Independence two days later. Congress functioned as the provisional government of the United States of America through March 1, 1781, when congress became what is now often called the Confederation Congress. During this period, it successfully managed the war effort, drafted the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, adopted the first U.S. constitution, secured diplomatic recognition and support from foreign nations, and resolved state land claims west of the Appalachian Mountains. Many of the delegates who attended the Second Congress had also attended the First. They again elected Peyton Randolph as president of the Congress and Charles Thomson as secretary. Notable new arrivals included Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania and John Hancock of Massachusetts. Within two weeks, Randolph was summoned back to Virginia to preside over the House of Burgesses; Hancock succeeded him as president, and Thomas Jefferson replaced Randolph in the Virginia delegation. The number of participating colonies also grew, as Georgia endorsed the Congress in July 1775 and adopted the continental ban on trade with Britain.

Buenos Aires, officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− global city, according to the GaWC 2024 ranking. The city proper has a population of 3.1 million and its urban area has a population of 16.7 million, making it the 21st most populous metropolitan area in the world.

The Battle of Wagram ([ˈvaɡram]; 5–6 July 1809) was a military engagement of the Napoleonic Wars that ended in a costly but decisive victory for Emperor Napoleon's French and allied army against the Austrian army under the command of Archduke Charles of Austria-Teschen. The battle led to the breakup of the Fifth Coalition, the Austrian and British-led alliance against France. Wagram was the largest battle in European history up to that time. In 1809, the French military presence in the Confederation of the Rhine was diminished as Napoleon transferred a number of soldiers to fight in the Peninsular War. As a result, the Austrian Empire saw its chance to recover some of its former sphere of influence and invaded the Kingdom of Bavaria, a French ally. Recovering from his initial surprise, Napoleon beat the Austrian forces and occupied Vienna at the beginning of May 1809. Despite the string of sharp defeats and the loss of the empire's capital, Archduke Charles salvaged an army, with which he retreated north of the Danube. This allowed the Austrians to continue the war. Towards the end of May, Napoleon resumed the offensive, suffering a surprise defeat at the Battle of Aspern-Essling. It took Napoleon six weeks to prepare his next offensive, for which he amassed a French, German and Italian army of over 150,000 men in the vicinity of Vienna. The Battle of Wagram began after Napoleon crossed the Danube with the bulk of these forces during the night of 4 July and attacked the Austrian army, which had over 130,000 men. Having successfully crossed the river, Napoleon attempted an early breakthrough and launched a series of evening attacks against the Austrian army. The Austrians were thinly spread in a wide semicircle, but held a naturally strong position. After the attackers enjoyed some initial success, the defenders regained the upper hand and the attacks failed. Bolstered by his success, the next day at dawn Archduke Charles launched a series of attacks along the entire battle line, seeking to take the opposing army in a double envelopment. The offensive failed against the French right but nearly broke Napoleon's left. However, the Emperor countered by launching a cavalry charge; the Austrian battalion-sized, tightly packed column formation (literally a square; mass), suitable for the multitude of hastily trained Austrian soldiers, held off the attack, but this temporarily halted the Austrian advance. Bonaparte then redeployed IV Corps to stabilise his left, while setting up a grand battery, which pounded the Austrian right and centre. The Austrians used "lie down" tactics to reduce losses from artillery. In the battle, there was also an action when a battalion of Austrian jäger took cover in a drainage ditch 100 paces in front of Deutsch-Wagram; when the French columns marched toward this village the well-drilled jäger rose up and delivered a volley at close range, similar to what the coalition did at Waterloo 6 years later. The tide of battle turned, despite the Austrians' resilience. The Emperor, with his superior numbers, launched an offensive along the entire line. Maréchal Louis-Nicolas Davout drove an offensive which turned the Austrian left and rendered Charles's position untenable, despite the failure of Général Macdonald's attack. Towards mid-afternoon on 6 July, Charles admitted defeat and led a retreat, frustrating enemy attempts to pursue. After the battle, Charles remained in command of a cohesive force and decided to retreat to Bohemia. However, the Grande Armée eventually caught up with him and scored a victory at the Battle of Znaim. With the battle still raging, Charles decided to ask for an armistice, effectively ending the war. The two-day battle of Wagram was particularly bloody, mainly due to the extensive use of artillery on a flat battlefield packed with some 300,000 men. Although Napoleon was the uncontested winner, he failed to secure an overwhelming victory and the Austrian casualties were only slightly greater than those of the French and allies. Nonetheless, the defeat was serious enough to shatter the morale of the Austrians, who could no longer find the will to continue the struggle. The resulting Treaty of Schönbrunn meant the loss of one sixth of the Austrian Empire's subjects, along with some territories, rendering it landlocked until the German Campaign of 1813. After the battle, Emperor Napoleon bestowed on Louis-Alexandre Berthier, who was his Marshal, Chief of Staff, Minister of War and Vice-Constable of the Empire, the victory title of 1st Prince of Wagram, making him an official member of the French nobility. Berthier had previously been granted the title of Sovereign Prince of Neuchâtel and the Prince of Valangin in 1806. This allowed his descendants to carry the titles of Prince and Princess of Wagram.

The Venezuelan Declaration of Independence (Spanish: Acta de la Declaración de Independencia de Venezuela) is a document drafted and adopted by Venezuela on July 5, 1811, through which Venezuelans made the decision to separate from the Spanish Crown in order to establish a new nation based on the premises of equality of individuals, abolition of censorship and dedication to freedom of expression. These principles were enshrined as a constitutional principle for the new nation and were radically opposed to the political, cultural, and social practices that had existed during three hundred years of colonization.

The War of 1812 was a conflict initiated by the United States against the United Kingdom and its allies fought mainly in North America and at sea during the wider Napoleonic Wars. The United States declared war on Britain on 18 June 1812. Although peace terms were agreed upon in the December 1814 Treaty of Ghent, the war did not officially end until the peace treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on 17 February 1815.

The Battle of Chippawa (sometimes spelled Chippewa) was a War of 1812 battle fought on July 5, 1814, in which the United States Army defeated British forces during the American invasion of Upper Canada along the Niagara River. This battle and the subsequent Battle of Lundy's Lane demonstrated that trained American troops could hold their own against British regulars. The battlefield is preserved as a National Historic Site of Canada.

Louis-Auguste-Victor, Count de Ghaisnes de Bourmont (2 September 1773 – 27 October 1846) was a French general, diplomat, and statesman who was named Marshal of France in 1830. A lifelong royalist, he emigrated from France soon after the outbreak of the French Revolution. Bourmont would later join the counter-revolutionary Army of Condé for two years, before joining the insurrection in France for three more years before going into exile. Returning to France he was arrested after assisting the Georges Cadoudal conspiracy, but escaped prison to Portugal. In 1807, he took advantage of an amnesty to rejoin the French army and served in several campaigns until 1814. He rose in rank to become a général de division in the imperial army. During this period, he was suspected of being an agent of the Comte d'Artois, and of passing information to France's enemies. Though he was notoriously anti-Napoleon and many officers did not trust him, he was employed again during the Hundred Days. Immediately after the campaign began, he deserted to the Prussian army with Napoleon's plans. Bourmont would give evidence against Michel Ney in 1815. King Louis XVIII gave Bourmont a command in the Spanish expedition of 1823. Charles X (the former Comte d'Artois), put Bourmont in command of the Invasion of Algiers in 1830. Despite Bourmont's military success, in his absence, the absolutist rule of Charles X fell to the July Revolution. Bourmont refused to recognize King Louis Philippe I. After being involved in a plot against the new government, he fled to Portugal in 1832, where he led the army of Dom Miguel in the Liberal Wars. After the liberals won, Bourmont fled to the Papal states. Bourmont lived in Rome until he accepted another amnesty in 1840, and died in France six years later.

Thomas Cook was the founder of the travel agency Thomas Cook & Son. He was born into a poor family in Derbyshire and left school at the age of ten to start work as a gardener's boy. He served an apprenticeship as a cabinet maker before becoming an itinerant Baptist preacher. He was a supporter of the temperance movement and his first foray into tourism was a railway excursion to Loughborough for members of the Leicester Temperance Society in 1841. Following the success of this excursion, Cook, by then settled with his family in Leicester, began to organise tours further afield in the British Isles and, eventually, to the United States, Egypt and the Holy Land. In 1872, he went into business with his son as Thomas Cook & Son, with a head office in London. Following his retirement in 1878, he returned to Leicester and took an interest in the Baptist church and charitable work until his death. Cook is credited with having, through his all-inclusive tours, made travel and tourism accessible to a wider public.

Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was "the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century". After escaping from slavery in Maryland in 1838, Douglass became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York and gained fame for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to claims by supporters of slavery that enslaved people lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been enslaved. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography. Douglass wrote three autobiographies, describing his experiences as an enslaved person first in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), which became a bestseller and was influential in promoting the cause of abolition, as was his second book, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Following the Civil War, Douglass was an active campaigner for the rights of freed slaves and wrote his last autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. First published in 1881 and revised in 1892, three years before his death, the book covers his life up to those dates. Douglass also actively supported women's suffrage, and he held several public offices. In 1872, without his knowledge or consent, Douglass became the first African American nominated for vice president of the United States, as the running mate of Victoria Woodhull on the Equal Rights Party ticket. Douglass believed in making alliances across racial and ideological divides, as well as in the anti-slavery interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, after he had broken with William Lloyd Garrison. When radical abolitionists, under the motto "No Union with Slaveholders", criticized Douglass's willingness to engage in dialogue with slave owners, he replied: "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."

Midway Atoll (colloquial: Midway Islands; Hawaiian: Kuaihelani, lit. 'the backbone of heaven'; Pihemanu, 'the loud din of birds') is a 2.4 sq mi (6.2 km2) atoll in the North Pacific Ocean. Midway Atoll is an insular area of the United States, and is an unorganized and unincorporated territory of the U.S. Midway Atoll consists of three islands. The largest island is Sand Island, which is inhabited and has an airstrip. Immediately east of Sand Island, across the narrow Brooks Channel, is Eastern Island, which is uninhabited and no longer has any facilities. Forming a rough, incomplete circle around the two main islands and creating Midway Lagoon is a third island, Spit Island, a narrow reef. Roughly equidistant between North America and Asia, the islands of the Midway Atoll are the only three islands in the Hawaiian Islands not part of the state of Hawaii. Unlike the other Hawaiian islands, Midway observes Samoa Time (UTC−11:00, i.e., eleven hours behind Coordinated Universal Time), which is one hour behind the time in the Hawaii–Aleutian Time Zone used in Hawaii. For statistical purposes, Midway is grouped as one of the United States Minor Outlying Islands. The Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, encompassing 590,991.50 acres (239,165.77 ha) of land and water in the surrounding area, is administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). The refuge and surrounding area are part of the larger Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. From 1941 until 1993, the atoll was the home of Naval Air Facility Midway Island, which played a crucial role in the Battle of Midway, June 4–6, 1942. Aircraft based at the then-named Henderson Field on Eastern Island joined with United States Navy ships and planes in an attack on a Japanese battle group that sank four carriers and one heavy cruiser and defended the atoll from invasion. The battle was a critical Allied victory and a significant turning point of the Pacific campaign of World War II. About 50 people live on Sand Island: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff and contract workers. Visiting the atoll is possible only for business reasons, which includes permanent and temporary staff, contractors, and volunteers, as the tourism program has been suspended due to budget cutbacks. In 2012, the last year that the visitor program was in operation, 332 people made the trip to Midway. Tours focused on the unique ecology of Midway and its military history. The economy is derived solely from governmental sources. Nearly all supplies must be brought to the island by ship or plane, although a hydroponic greenhouse and garden supply some fresh fruits and vegetables.

The United States Secret Service is a federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Homeland Security. It is tasked with conducting criminal investigations and providing protection to American political leaders, their families, and visiting heads of state or government.

The German Empire, also referred to as Imperial Germany or the Second Reich, was the period of the German Reich from the unification of Germany in 1871 until the November Revolution in 1918, when Germany changed its form of government to a republic. The German Empire consisted of 25 states, each with its own nobility: four constituent kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. While Prussia was only one of the four kingdoms in the realm, it contained about two-thirds of the Empire's population and territory, and Prussian dominance was also constitutionally established, since the king of Prussia was also the German Emperor.

The Liberty Bell, previously called the State House Bell or Old State House Bell, is an iconic symbol of American independence, located in Philadelphia. It was first called the Liberty Bell by members of the American abolitionist movement, who used it as a symbol. Originally placed in the steeple of the Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall), the Liberty Bell today is located across the street from Independence Hall in the Liberty Bell Center in Independence National Historical Park. The bell was commissioned in 1752 by the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly from the London-based firm Lester and Pack, later renamed the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, and was cast with the lettering "Proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants Thereof". The bell first cracked when rung after its arrival in Philadelphia, and was twice recast by local workmen John Pass and John Stow, whose surnames appear on the bell. In its early years, the bell was used to summon lawmakers to legislative sessions and to alert citizens to public meetings and proclamations. It is likely that the Liberty Bell was among the bells in Philadelphia to ring on July 8, 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was first read to the public, although no contemporary account of the ringing is known to exist, and the association of the bell with the American Revolution did not begin until 1847, a decade after it was adopted by the abolitionists, who dubbed it the Liberty Bell. In the 1830s, it was adopted as a symbol by abolitionist societies, who dubbed it the "Liberty Bell". It acquired its distinctive large crack sometime in the first half of the 19th century—a widespread story claims it cracked while ringing after the death of Chief Justice John Marshall in 1835. In the late 19th and early 20th century, it was several times sent on journeys to large expositions, and was further damaged by souvenir hunters. After World War II, Philadelphia allowed the National Park Service to take custody of the bell, while retaining ownership. The bell was used as a symbol of freedom during the Cold War and was a popular site for protests in the 1960s. It was moved from its longtime home in Independence Hall to a nearby glass pavilion on Independence National Historical Park in 1976, and then to the larger Liberty Bell Center adjacent to the pavilion in 2003. The bell has been featured on coins and stamps, and its name and image have been widely used by corporations.

The 1934 West Coast waterfront strike (also known as the 1934 West Coast longshoremen's strike, as well as a number of variations on these names) began on May 9, 1934, when longshoremen in every U.S. West Coast port walked out. It lasted 83 days. Organized by the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), the strike peaked with the death of two workers on "Bloody Thursday" and the subsequent San Francisco General Strike, which stopped all work in the major port city for four days, and led ultimately to the settlement of the West Coast Longshoremen's Strike. The result of the strike was the unionization of all of the West Coast ports of the United States. The San Francisco General Strike of 1934, along with the Toledo Auto-Lite Strike of 1934 led by the American Workers Party and the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 led by the Communist League of America, were catalysts for the rise of industrial unionism in the 1930s, much of which was organized through the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, is a foundational statute of United States labor law that guarantees the right of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining, and take collective action such as strikes. Central to the act was a ban on company unions. The act was written by Senator Robert F. Wagner, passed by the 74th United States Congress, and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The National Labor Relations Act seeks to correct the "inequality of bargaining power" between employers and employees by promoting collective bargaining between trade unions and employers. The law established the National Labor Relations Board to prosecute violations of labor law and to oversee the process by which employees decide whether to be represented by a labor organization. It also established various rules concerning collective bargaining and defined a series of banned unfair labor practices, including interference with the formation or organization of labor unions by employers. The act does not apply to certain workers, including supervisors, agricultural employees, domestic workers, government employees, and independent contractors. The NLRA was strongly opposed by conservatives and members of the Republican Party, but it was upheld in the Supreme Court case of NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., decided April 12, 1937. The 1947 Taft–Hartley Act amended the NLRA, establishing a series of labor practices for unions and granting states the power to pass right-to-work laws.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometer (1,800 mi) front, with the main goal of capturing territory up to a line between Arkhangelsk and Astrakhan, known as the A–A line. The attack became the largest and costliest military offensive in human history, with around 10 million combatants taking part in the opening phase and over 8 million casualties by the end of the operation on 5 December 1941. It marked a major escalation of World War II, opened the Eastern Front—the largest and deadliest land war in history—and brought the Soviet Union into the Allied powers. The operation, code-named after the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa ("red beard"), put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goals of eradicating communism and conquering the western Soviet Union to repopulate it with Germans under Generalplan Ost, which planned for the removal of the native Slavic peoples by mass deportation to Siberia, Germanisation, enslavement, and genocide. The material targets of the invasion were the agricultural and mineral resources of territories such as Ukraine and Byelorussia and oil fields in the Caucasus. The Axis eventually captured five million Soviet Red Army troops on the Eastern Front and deliberately starved to death or otherwise killed 3.3 million prisoners of war, as well as millions of civilians. Mass shootings and gassing operations, carried out by German paramilitary death squads and collaborators, murdered over a million Soviet Jews as part of the Holocaust. In the two years leading up to the invasion, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed political and economic pacts for strategic purposes. Following the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in July 1940, the German High Command began planning an invasion of the country, which was approved by Adolf Hitler in December. In early 1941, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, despite receiving intelligence about an imminent attack, did not order a mobilization of the Red Army, fearing that it might provoke Germany. As a result, Soviet forces were largely caught unprepared when the invasion began, with many units positioned poorly and understrength. The invasion began on 22 June 1941 with a massive ground and air assault. The main part of Army Group South invaded from occupied Poland on 22 June, and on 2 July was joined by a combination of German and Romanian forces attacking from Romania. Kiev was captured on 19 September, which was followed by the captures of Kharkov on 24 October and Rostov-on-Don on 20 November, by which time most of Crimea had been captured and Sevastopol put under siege. Army Group North overran the Baltic lands, and on 8 September 1941 began a siege of Leningrad with Finnish forces that ultimately lasted until 1944. Army Group Centre, the strongest of the three groups, captured Smolensk in late July 1941 before beginning a drive on Moscow on 2 October. Facing logistical problems with supply, slowed by muddy terrain, not fully outfitted for Russia's brutal winter, and coping with determined Soviet resistance, Army Group Centre's offensive stalled at the city's outskirts by 5 December, at which point the Soviets began a major counteroffensive. The failure of Operation Barbarossa reversed the fortunes of Nazi Germany. Operationally, it achieved significant victories and occupied some of the most important economic regions of the Soviet Union, captured millions of prisoners, and inflicted heavy casualties. The German high command anticipated a quick collapse of resistance as in the invasion of Poland, but instead the Red Army absorbed the German Wehrmacht's strongest blows and bogged it down in a war of attrition for which Germany was unprepared. Following the heavy losses and logistical strain of Barbarossa, German forces mounted subsequent offensives on a much narrower front—such as Case Blue in 1942 and Operation Citadel in 1943—both of which ultimately failed.

The Allies, or Allied powers, formally referred to as the United Nations from 1942, were an international military coalition formed during World War II (1939–1945) to oppose the Axis powers. Its principal members were the "Big Four"—the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States, and China.

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from its formation in 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's third-most populous country, the largest by area, and bordered twelve other countries. A diverse multinational state, it was organized as a federal union of national republics, with the largest and most populous being the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR). The world's flagship communist state, it was governed by the Communist Party under Marxism–Leninism, through soviet councils. The Soviet economy was also centrally planned. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with a population of over 69 million in 2024. The UK includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and most of the smaller islands within the British Isles, covering 94,354 square miles (244,376 km2). It shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea, while maintaining sovereignty over the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. The capital and largest city of England and the UK is London; Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast are the national capitals of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, respectively.

Micheline Bernardini is a French former nude dancer at the Casino de Paris who agreed to model, on 5 July 1946, Louis Réard's two-piece swimsuit, which he called the bikini, named four days after the first test of an American nuclear weapon at the Bikini Atoll.

The National Health Service (NHS) is the collective term for the four separate publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service in England, NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland, which were created separately, and are often referred to collectively or individually as "the NHS".

The Korean War was an armed conflict fought on the Korean Peninsula between North Korea and South Korea and their allies. North Korea was supported by China and the Soviet Union, while South Korea was supported by the United Nations led by the United States under the auspices of the United Nations Command (UNC).

The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel.

Elvis Aaron Presley was an American singer and actor. Referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll", he is widely regarded as one of the most culturally significant figures of the 20th century. Presley's energetic and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a mixture of influences across color lines during a transformative era in race relations, brought both great success and initial controversy.

On July 5, 1970, Air Canada Flight 621, a Douglas DC-8 registered as CF-TIW, was flying from Montréal–Dorval International Airport, Quebec, Canada, to Los Angeles International Airport, California, United States, via Toronto International Airport, Ontario, Canada. During landing at Toronto, the aircraft touched down hard, which ruptured the right fuel tanks. After a go-around, the right wing's fuel tanks exploded thrice and the aircraft crashed in Toronto Gore Township, now part of Brampton.

The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution establishes a nationally standardized highest permissible minimum age of 18 for participation in state and federal elections. It was proposed by Congress on March 23, 1971, and three-fourths of the states ratified it by July 1, 1971.

A boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion is an explosion caused by the rupture of a vessel containing a pressurized liquid that has attained a temperature sufficiently higher than its boiling point at atmospheric pressure. Because the boiling point of a liquid rises with pressure, the contents of the pressurized vessel can remain a liquid as long as the vessel is intact. If the vessel's integrity is compromised, the loss of pressure drops the boiling point, which can cause a portion of the liquid to boil and form a cloud of rapidly expanding vapor. BLEVEs are manifestations of explosive boiling.

Juvénal Habyarimana was a Rwandan politician and military dictator who was the second president of Rwanda, from 1973 until his assassination in 1994.

Arthur Robert Ashe Jr. was an American professional tennis player. He won three Grand Slam singles titles in singles and two in doubles. Ashe was the first Black player selected to the United States Davis Cup team, and the only Black man ever to win the singles titles at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open. He remained an amateur player before the advent of the Open Era in tennis. Ashe was a serve-and-volley player with a powerful serve. In 1975 he won the season-ending WCT Finals. He suffered a heart attack in July 1979 and retired in 1980.

Cape Verde, also referred to in English by its Portuguese name Cabo Verde, and known officially as the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an archipelagic country in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of West Africa. It consists of ten volcanic islands with a combined land area of about 4,033 square kilometres (1,557 sq mi). These islands lie between 600 and 850 kilometres west of Cap-Vert, the westernmost point of continental Africa, after which they are named. Cape Verde forms part of the Macaronesia ecoregion, along with the Azores, the Canary Islands, Madeira and the Savage Islands.

Björn Rune Borg is a Swedish former professional tennis player. He was ranked as the world No. 1 in men's singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 109 weeks. Borg won 66 singles titles during his career, including eleven majors: six at the French Open and five consecutively at Wimbledon. Borg was ATP Player of the Year from 1976 to 1980, the year-end No. 1 in the ATP rankings in 1979 and 1980, and the ITF World Champion from 1978 to 1980.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on questions of U.S. constitutional or federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party". In 1803, the court asserted the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law.

The Sri Lankan civil war was fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, it was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam led by Velupillai Prabhakaran. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north-east of the island in response to continuous discrimination and violent persecution against Sri Lankan Tamils by the predominantly Sinhalese government of Sri Lanka.

The Iran–Contra affair or Iran–Contra scandal, also referred to as the Iran Initiative or Contragate, was a political scandal in the United States that centered on arms trafficking to Iran between 1981 and 1986, facilitated by senior officials of the Reagan administration. The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras, an anti-Sandinista rebel group in Nicaragua. Under the Boland Amendments, a series of laws passed by Congress and signed by Ronald Reagan, further funding of the Contras by legislative appropriations was prohibited by Congress, but the Reagan administration continued funding them secretly using non-appropriated funds.

Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American businessman, and the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and cloud computing company. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes, he was the world's wealthiest person from 2017 to 2021, and in 2026, his net worth was approximately US$284 billion.

Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked country in the Armenian highlands of West Asia. It is a part of the Caucasus region and is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to the south. Yerevan is the capital, largest city and financial center.

Dolly was a female Finn-Dorset sheep and the first mammal that was cloned from an adult somatic cell. She was cloned by associates of the Roslin Institute in Scotland, using the process of nuclear transfer from a cell taken from a mammary gland. Her cloning proved that a cloned organism could be produced from a mature cell from a specific body part. Contrary to popular belief, she was not the first animal to be cloned.

The Sri Lankan civil war was fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, it was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam led by Velupillai Prabhakaran. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north-east of the island in response to continuous discrimination and violent persecution against Sri Lankan Tamils by the predominantly Sinhalese government of Sri Lanka.

William Jefferson Clinton is an American retired politician and lawyer who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979, the governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, and governor again from 1983 to 1992. His centrist Third Way political philosophy became known as Clintonism, which defined his presidency and the succeeding decades of Democratic Party into the 21st century.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and has six regional offices and 150 field offices worldwide. Only sovereign states are eligible to join, and it is the largest intergovernmental health organization at the international level.

North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu (Amnok) and Tumen rivers, and South Korea to the south at the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The country's western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eastern border is defined by the Sea of Japan. Pyongyang is the capital and largest city.

The Staffordshire Hoard is the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork yet found. It consists of almost 4,600 items and metal fragments, amounting to a total of 5.1 kg (11 lb) of gold, 1.4 kg (3 lb) of silver and some 3,500 pieces of garnet cloisonné jewellery. It is described by the historian Cat Jarman as "possibly the finest collection of early medieval artefacts ever discovered".

The Shard, also referred to as the Shard London Bridge and formerly London Bridge Tower, is a 95-storey mixed-use development supertall pyramid-shaped skyscraper, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, in Southwark, London, that forms part of The Shard Quarter development. Standing 309.6 metres high, The Shard is the tallest building in the United Kingdom and Western Europe; and the seventh-tallest building in Europe. The Shard replaced Southwark Towers, a 24-storey office block built on the site in 1975.

Juno is a NASA space probe orbiting the planet Jupiter. Built by Lockheed Martin and operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on August 5, 2011, 16:25:00 UTC, as part of the New Frontiers program. Juno entered a polar orbit of Jupiter on July 5, 2016, 03:53:00 UTC, to begin a scientific investigation of the planet. After completing its mission, Juno was originally planned to be intentionally deorbited into Jupiter's atmosphere, but has since been approved to continue orbiting until contact is lost with the spacecraft. It will continue to explore Jupiter to study Jovian rings and the inner moons area, which is not well explored; this phase will also include close flybys of the moons Thebe, Amalthea, Adrastea, and Metis.

Sir Sajid Javid is a British former politician who served as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care from June 2021 to July 2022, having previously served as Home Secretary from 2018 to 2019 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2019 to 2020. A member of the Conservative Party, he was Member of Parliament for Bromsgrove between 2010 and 2024.

Ariane 5 is a retired European heavy-lift space launch vehicle operated by Arianespace for the European Space Agency (ESA). It was launched from the Guiana Space Centre (CSG) in French Guiana. It was used to deliver payloads into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), low Earth orbit (LEO) or further into space. The launch vehicle had a streak of 82 consecutive successful launches between 9 April 2003 and 12 December 2017. In development since 2014, Ariane 6, a direct successor system was first launched in 2024.

Sir Keir Rodney Starmer is a British politician and former lawyer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2024 to 2026. He was Leader of the Labour Party from 2020 to 2026 and Leader of the Opposition from 2020 to 2024. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn and St Pancras from 2015 to 2026. Before entering politics, he was a barrister and served as Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013.