On this day: July 20
An ancient king is born, the first Ford rolls off the line, the Special Olympics are born, man lands on the moon and a home run king belts his last, all on this day.
356 BC: Alexander the Great, Greek king of Macedonia and conqueror of Persia, is born. Here he is depicted in a Roman floor mural from 100 B.C.
356 BC: Alexander the Great, Greek king of Macedonia and conqueror of Persia, is born. Here he is depicted in a Roman floor mural from 100 B.C.
1807: Nicéphore Niépce is awarded a patent by Napoleon Bonaparte for the Pyréolophore, the world's first internal combustion engine, after it successfully powers a boat upstream on the river Saône in France.
1858: Brooklyn and New York play baseball at Fashion Park Race Course on Long Island, N.Y. The game marks the first time that admission (50 cents) had been charged to see a baseball game. New York beats Brooklyn 22-18.
1871: British Columbia joins the confederation of Canada.
1903: Henry Ford's Ford Motor Company ships its first car.
1917: The Corfu Declaration, which leads to the creation of the post-World War I Kingdom of Yugoslavia, is signed by the Yugoslav Committee and Kingdom of Serbia.
1917: The World War I draft lottery is held for the first time. No. 258 is the first number drawn.
1919: Sir Edmund Hillary, who, along with Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay, would become the first climber confirmed as having reached the summit of Mount Everest, is born in Auckland, New Zealand.
1923: Mexican guerrilla leader Pancho Villa is assassinated outside Parral, Mexico.
1937: Italian electrical engineer and inventor Guglielmo Marconi, who invented the wireless telegraph known today as radio, dies at age 63 in Rome.
1938: The United States Department of Justice files suit in New York City against the motion picture industry charging violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act in regards to the studio system. The case would eventually result in a break-up of the industry in 1948.
1938: Actress Diana Rigg ("On Her Majesty's Secret Service," TV's "The Avengers") is born in Doncaster, West Riding of Yorkshire, England.
1938: Actress Natalie Wood ("West Side Story," "Rebel Without a Cause") is born under the birth name Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko in San Francisco.
1940: California opens its first freeway, the Arroyo Seco Parkway.
1940: Billboard publishes its first singles record chart with No. 1 being "I'll Never Smile Again" by Tommy Dorsey.
1944: Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt led by German Army Col. Claus von Stauffenberg.
1944: President Franklin D. Roosevelt is nominated for an unprecedented fourth term at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
1947: Rock musician Carlos Santana is born in Autlán de Navarro, Jalisco, Mexico.
1960: Sirimavo Bandaranaike (seen at left) becomes the world's first elected female head of government, after her Sri Lanka Freedom Party wins a majority in elections in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
1963: Jan and Dean's "Surf City" becomes the first surfin' record to go No. 1. The song also crossed to No. 3 on Billboard's R&B charts.
1965: Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" is released.
1968: The first Special Olympics is held at Soldier Field in Chicago. Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who helped found the event, is seen here overlooking the games.
1969: Apollo 11 successfully makes the first manned landing on the Moon in the Sea of Tranquility. Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to walk on the Moon almost seven hours later.
1971: Actress Sandra Oh ("Grey's Anatomy," "Sideways") is born in Ottawa, Canada.
1973: Actor and martial artist Bruce Lee dies in Hong Kong.
1976: The American Viking 1 lander becomes the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars.
1976: Hank Aaron hits his 755th and final home run at Milwaukee County Stadium off Dick Drago of the California Angels, which stood as the major-league home run record until it was broken in 2007.
1977: The Central Intelligence Agency releases documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind control experiments, leading to Senate hearings later that same year.
1977: Vietnam becomes a member of the United Nations.
1980: Model Gisele Bundchen is born in Horizontina, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
1984: "Revenge of the Nerds" is released.
1984: Vanessa Williams, the first African-American Miss America, is asked to resign due to indecent photographs published in Penthouse magazine.
1986: "Sid and Nancy," a film biography that portrays the life of Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols and his relationship with girlfriend Nancy Spungen, premieres in London.
1988: Actress and ballroom dancer Julianne Hough ("Footloose," "Rock of Ages") is born in Sandy, Utah.
1988: Michael Dukakis is selected as the Democratic presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.
1994: As he awaits trial in the killings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, O.J. Simpson offers a $500,000 reward for information leading to arrest of the "real killer or killers." Attorney Robert Shapiro establishes a national toll-free hot line for tips.
2005: Canada becomes the fourth country in the world to permit same-sex marriage.
2005: "Star Trek" actor James Doohan dies in Redmond, Wash., at the age of 85.
2007: Televangelist Tammy Faye Messner (Bakker) dies in Loch Lloyd, Mo., at the age of 65.
2012: A gunman opens fire in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater during a midnight showing of the Batman sequel "The Dark Knight Rises," killing 12 and wounding 58 others.
