First Confidential

THIS DAY IN HISTORY - JULY 26th

This Day in History

July 26th, 920

Rout of an alliance of Christian troops from Navarre and Léon against the Muslims at Pamplona

Rout of an alliance of Christian troops from Navarre and Léon against the Muslims at Pamplona.

Wikipedia  Photo: Pamplona; ● Thousands of people celebrate the start of the San Fermin Festival 2012 raising their red scarfs after the opening ceremony 'Chupinazo,' which starts, as every year, at midday in the Plaza Consistorial outside the City Hall in Pamplona, Navarra, Spain. NBC News, Jesus Diges / EPA ● Thousands of runners raced ahead of six fighting bulls in the streets of the Spanish city of Pamplona for this year's San Fermin festival. The Telegraph / EPA.

July 26th, 1509

Emperor Krishnadeva Raya ascends to the throne, marking the beginning of the regeneration of the Vijayanagara Empire

Vijayanagara Empire: Emperor Krishnadeva Raya ascends to the throne, marking the beginning of the regeneration of the empire.

Wikipedia  Photo: Elephant stable back during the Vijayanagara Empire

July 26th, 1533

Atahualpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Incas, dies by strangulation at the hands of Francisco Pizarro's Spanish conquistadors. His death marks the end of 300 years of Inca civilization

Atahualpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Incas, dies by strangulation at the hands of Francisco Pizarros Spanish conquistadors. His death marks the end of 300 years of Inca civilization.

Wikipedia  Image: Francisco Pizarro, Governor of New Castile; Map, The Conquest of Peru, 1531 - 1533; Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru Millais, John Everett

July 26th, 1861

Lincoln Memorial: an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument American Civil War: Battle of Antietam; Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland American Civil War, Battle of Mobile Bay: at Mobile Bay near Mobile, Alabama, Admiral David Farragut leads a Union flotilla through Confederate defenses and seals one of the last major Southern ports

American Civil War:
1861 - George B. McClellan assumes command of the Army of the Potomac following a disastrous Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run.
1863 - Morgan's Raid ends - At Salineville, Ohio Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan and 360 of his volunteers are captured by Union forces.

Wikipedia  Image: ● Lincoln Memorial; an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument.
● The northern army led by George McClellan and the southern army led by Robert E. Lee met at Antietam Creek, Maryland in September, 1862. It was a bloody battle where 13,000 Confederates and 12,000 Union troops died in just one day. McClellan had hesitated to attack before the battle thus letting the southern troops regroup. Also, he had saved reserves and refused to use them at the end of the battle thinking that Lee was holding reserves for a counterattack, even though those reserves didn't exist. The Union victory stopped Lee's northward advance and was a turning point in the war.
● Battle of Antietam / Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland
● Battle of Mobile Bay (1890) by Xanthus Russell Smith.
● Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. The Atlantic.

July 26th, 1936

World War II: Second firestorm raid on Germany, the Royal Air Force conducts an air raid on the town of Kassel, killing 10,000 and rendering 150,000 homeless World War II: Battle of Leyte Gulf; Battle of Leyte Gulf; The first kamikaze attack: A Japanese plane carrying a 200-kilogram (440 lb) bomb attacks HMAS Australia off Leyte Island World War II: German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944) World War II: Eastern Front (World War II); was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945

World War II:
1936 - Axis Powers intervene in the Spanish Civil War.
1941 - In response to the Japanese occupation of French Indo-China, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the seizure of all Japanese assets in the United States.
1944 - Soviet army enters Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, liberating it from the Nazis. Only 300 Jews survive out of 160,000 living in Lviv prior to occupation.
1944 - The first German V-2 rocket hits Great Britain.
1945 - Potsdam Declaration is signed in Potsdam, Germany.
1945 - The U.S. Navy cruiser USS Indianapolis arrives at Tinian with parts of the warhead for the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

Wikipedia  Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.

Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.

July 26th, 1947

Cold War: often dated from 1947–1991, was a sustained state of political and military tension between the powers of the Western world, led by the United States and its NATO allies, and the communist world, led by the Soviet Union, its satellite states and allies Cold War: in Moscow, downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is sentenced to ten years imprisonment by the Soviet Union for espionage Cold War: The Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological conflict and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991

Cold War:
1947 - U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into United States law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Air Force, United States Department of Defense and the United States National Security Council.

Wikipedia  Photo: Lockheed C-130 Hercules; RAF Menwith Hill, a large site in the United Kingdom, part of ECHELON and the UKUSA Agreement; New Zealand nuclear test, British nuclear tests near the Malden and Christmas Islands in the mid-Pacific in 1957 and 1958; Nevada nuclear tests, Nevada Division of Environmental Protection Bureau of Federal Facilities.
U2, Lockheed TR-1 in flight.

July 26th, 1953

Cuban Revolution Collage

Cuban Revolution:
1953 - Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks.

Wikipedia  Photo / Map: The leadership of the Cuban revolution; Fidel Castro played the leading role in the Cuban revolution against Fulgencio Batista (1957) AFP; Fidel Castro leads men in a cheer, Cuba, 1957, Bettmann/ Corbis; Cuban Airlift to the United States (1959 and 1962); Resiste Cuba, homenaje a la revolución cubana y sus héroes música: Protesta-Por Cuba; Che Guevara and Fidel Castro ; Official caption: "Off loading Cuban refugees at the Miami sea buoy", photo dated 4 May 1964; Photo No. 7CGD-050464 #12; Guerrillero Heroico - Alberto Korda's famous photograph of Che Guevara; The popularized cropped version.

July 26th, 1971

Apollo Program: Apollo 11 first manned Moon landing and the first walk on the surface on the moon. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module Eagle. Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. Armstrong and Aldrin explored the Sea of Tranquility for two and a half hours while crewmate Michael Collins orbited above in the command module Columbia. The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth, taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft, at a distance of about 45,000 kilometres (28,000 mi)

Apollo Program, Apollo 15: launch of the first Apollo "J-Mission", and first use of a Lunar Roving Vehicle.

Wikipedia  Photo: Apollo Program: Apollo 11 first manned Moon landing and the first walk on the surface on the moon. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module Eagle. Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. Armstrong and Aldrin explored the Sea of Tranquility for two and a half hours while crewmate Michael Collins orbited above in the command module Columbia.
The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth, taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft, at a distance of about 45,000 kilometres (28,000 mi).

July 26th, 2016

List of modern conflicts in the Middle East

Modern conflicts in the Middle East, social unrest and terrorist attacks:
2016 - Sagamihara stabbings; occur in Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. 19 people are killed.
2009 - Boko Haram Uprising; The militant Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram attacks a police station in Bauchi, leading to reprisals by the Nigeria Police Force and four days of violence across multiple cities.
2008 - Ahmedabad bombing; 56 people are killed and over 200 people are injured in 21 bomb blasts in Ahmedabad bombing in India.

Wikipedia  Photo: Middle East satellite image, NASA. ● Camels are seen early morning on a beach in the Marina area of Dubai October 16, 2008. (Steve Crisp, Reuters) ● A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad burns during clashes between rebels and Syrian troops in Selehattin, near Aleppo, on July 23, 2012. (Bulent Kilic, AFP / GettyImages) ● Egyptians gather in their thousands in Tahrir Square to mark the one year anniversary of the revolution on Jan. 25, 2012 in Cairo Egypt. Tens of thousands have gathered in the square on the first anniversary of the Arab uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. (Jeff J Mitchell, Getty Images) ● Black smoke rises above the Tehran skyline as supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi burn tires and other material in the streets as they fight running battles with police to protest the declared results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Ben Curtis, AP) ● The Iron Dome defense system fires to interecpt incoming missiles from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012. (Tsafrir Abayov, AP)

July 26th, 2016

Solar Impulse 2 becomes the first solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the Earth.

Solar Impulse 2 becomes the first solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the Earth.

Wikipedia  Photo: Solar Impulse 2 becomes the first solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the Earth.