On this day: July 18
A Nobel Peace Prize winner and astronaut are born, a gymnast reaches Olympic perfection and an epic superhero hits summer theaters, all on this day.
1290: King Edward I of England issues the Edict of Expulsion, banishing all Jews (numbering about 16,000) from England. Lasting for the rest of the Middle Ages, it would be over 350 years until it was formally overturned in 1656.
1290: King Edward I of England issues the Edict of Expulsion, banishing all Jews (numbering about 16,000) from England. Lasting for the rest of the Middle Ages, it would be over 350 years until it was formally overturned in 1656.
1610: Italian artist Caravaggio, whose work had a formative influence on the Baroque school of painting, dies.
1792: John Paul Jones, the United States' first well-known naval fighter in the American Revolution, dies. He is credited for the taunting reply "I have not yet begun to fight!"
1817: English novelist Jane Austen ("Pride and Prejudice," "Sense and Sensibility") dies in Winchester, Hampshire, England.
1863: The first formal African American military unit, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, fails in their assault on Confederate-held Battery Wagner in South Carolina in what became known as the Battle of Fort Wagner/Morris Island.
1870: The First Vatican Council decrees the dogma of papal infallibility.
1895: George "Machine Gun Kelly" Barnes, who would go onto be one of America's most well known gangsters during the Prohibition era, is born.
1897: Cap Anson becomes the first professional baseball player to get 3,000 hits. However, in that total were 60 walks, which during the 1887 season were counted as hits. Those hits were counted at first, removed by Major League Baseball, then restored again in 2001.
1911: Actor Hume Cronyn ("The Seventh Cross," "Cocoon") is born in London, Ontario, Canada. He is pictured here in 1994 with his second wife, fellow actress Jessica Tandy.
1918: Nelson Mandela, South African politician, president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is born in Mvezo, South Africa.
1921: John Glenn, American astronaut and politician, is born in Cambridge, Ohio.
1925: Adolf Hitler publishes his personal manifesto "Mein Kampf."
1927: Ty Cobb sets a major-league baseball record by getting his 4,000th career hit, doubling off former teammate Sam Gibson of the Detroit Tigers at Navin Field. He would go on to hit a total of 4,191 before retiring in 1928.
1936: The first Oscar Mayer Wienermobile rolls out of General Body Company's factory in Chicago.
1937: Journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson is born.
1940: Baseball player and manager Joe Torre is born in Brooklyn, N.Y.
1940: President Franklin D. Roosevelt is nominated for an unprecedented third term at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
1947: President S. Truman signs the Presidential Succession Act, which places the speaker of the House and the Senate president pro tempore next in the line of succession after the vice president.
1950: British billionaire and business magnate Richard Branson is born in London, England.
1953: Elvis Presley recorded "My Happiness" as a gift for his mother. It was his first recording.
1959: Bill Wright becomes the first African-American to win a championship conducted by the United States Golf Association with his victory at the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship at the Wellshire Golf Course in Denver.
1960: Baseball's National League votes to add the New York Mets and the Houston Colt .45s, which would become the Houston Astros when the team moved into the Astrodome in 1965, for the 1962 season.
1964: Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds, seen here in 2004, hits the only grand slam home run of his career.
1966: Gemini 10 is launched from Cape Kennedy on a 70-hour mission that includes docking with an orbiting Agena target vehicle.
1967: Actor Vin Diesel ("The Fast and the Furious," "xXx") is born under the birth name Mark Sinclair Vincent in New York City.
1968: The Intel Corporation is founded in Santa Clara, Calif.
1969: After a party on Martha's Vineyard's Chappaquiddick Island, Sen. Ted Kennedy drives an Oldsmobile off a bridge and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, dies. On July 25, Kennedy would guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was given a suspended sentence of two months in jail.
1976: 14-year-old Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci becomes the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Comaneci, who's seen here in 1977, won three gold medals in Montreal and five total in her career.
1980: Actress Kristen Bell ("Veronica Mars," "Forgetting Sarah Marshall") is born in Huntington Woods, Mich.
1984: Walter F. Mondale wins the Democratic presidential nomination in San Francisco.
1986: The movie sequel "Aliens," starring Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen and directed by James Cameron, is released.
1986: An expedition led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the U.S. Navy releases video showing Titanic's sunken remains for the first time. The video was filmed by Angus, an unmanned camera sled that was towed across the Titanic.
1988: A California appeals court upholds a lower courts' decision to dismiss a case against Ozzy Osbourne and CBS Records over a teenager who allegedly killed himself after listening to Ozzy's "Suicide Solution" in 1984.
1989: "My Sister Sam" actress Rebecca Schaeffer, 21, is shot to death at her Los Angeles home by obsessed fan Robert John Bardo. The killing prompts California in 1990 to pass the nation's first anti-stalking law.
1992: Singers Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown marry outside Houston's New Jersey residence.
1994: A federal judge rules that the NBA salary cap and draft rights do not violate antitrust laws.
1994: Crayola introduces scented crayons in 16 varieties. All but three of these were replaced within a year because parents complained children were eating the crayons.
1995: On the Caribbean island of Montserrat, the Soufriere Hills volcano erupts. Over the course of several years, it devastates the island, destroying the capital and forcing most of the population to flee.
2005: The iTunes Music Store reaches 500 million songs sold.
2005: Eric Rudolph is sentenced in Birmingham, Ala., to two consecutive life terms without parole for an abortion clinic bombing that killed an off-duty police officer.
2008: Christopher Nolan's Batman sequel "The Dark Knight" is released in theaters. The critically acclaimed film went on to make more than $1 billion worldwide and earn eight Oscar nominations, including a posthumous Best Supporting Actor win for Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker.
2011: The command of NATO forces in Afghanistan transfers from U.S. Gen. David Petraeus (pictured) to U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. John R. Allen.
