20 July in history

5 events that happened on 20 July, from 1810 to 1976.

  1. 1810 CE 216 years ago

    Bogotá rises against Spanish rule

    A quarrel over a borrowed flower vase sparked an uprising in Bogotá that created a governing junta. Colombia celebrates 20 July as its Independence Day; full independence came after Bolívar's victory in 1819.

  2. 1866 CE 160 years ago

    Austria defeats Italy at Lissa, the first great ironclad battle

    Admiral Tegetthoff's Austrian fleet defeated a larger Italian force off the island of Lissa in the Adriatic. The ramming of the Italian flagship convinced navies to fit rams to warships for decades.

    Austria

  3. 1944 CE 82 years ago

    Stauffenberg's bomb fails to kill Hitler

    Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg left a briefcase bomb at Hitler's Wolf's Lair headquarters, but Hitler survived. The plotters were executed and thousands more were arrested in the reprisals that followed.

  4. 1969 CE 57 years ago

    Apollo 11 lands on the Moon

    Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the lunar module Eagle in the Sea of Tranquillity. Hours later, at 10.56 pm US Eastern time, Armstrong stepped onto the surface, watched by some 600 million people.

  5. ✦ Anniversary of the day

    1976 CE 50 years ago

    Viking 1 makes the first successful landing on Mars

    NASA's Viking 1 lander touched down on Chryse Planitia and sent back the first photographs from the Martian surface. It operated for more than six years.

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