Events on July 15 47
Year 756
An Lushan Rebellion: Emperor Xuanzong of Tang is ordered by his Imperial Guards to execute chancellor Yang Guozhong by forcing him to commit suicide or face a mutiny. General An Lushan has other members of the emperor's family killed.
Year 1099
First Crusade: Christian soldiers take the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem after the final assault of a difficult siege.
Year 1207
King John of England expels Canterbury monks for supporting Archbishop Stephen Langton.
Year 1240
Swedish-Novgorodian Wars: A Novgorodian army led by Alexander Nevsky defeats the Swedes in the Battle of the Neva.
Year 1381
John Ball, a leader in the Peasants' Revolt, is hanged, drawn and quartered in the presence of King Richard II of England.
Year 1410
Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic War: Battle of Grunwald: The allied forces of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania defeat the army of the Teutonic Order.
Year 1685
Monmouth Rebellion: James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth is executed at Tower Hill, England after his defeat at the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 July 1685.
Year 1741
Aleksei Chirikov sights land in Southeast Alaska. He sends men ashore in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to visit Alaska.
Year 1789
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, is named by acclamation Colonel General of the new National Guard of Paris.
Year 1799
The Rosetta Stone is found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard during Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign.
Year 1806
Pike expedition: United States Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike begins an expedition from Fort Bellefontaine near St. Louis, Missouri, to explore the west.
Year 1823
A fire destroys the ancient Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, Italy.
Year 1838
Ralph Waldo Emerson delivers the Divinity School Address at Harvard Divinity School, discounting Biblical miracles and declaring Jesus a great man, but not God. The Protestant community reacts with outrage.
Year 1862
The CSS Arkansas, the most effective ironclad on the Mississippi River, battles with Union ships commanded by Admiral David Farragut, severely damaging three ships and sustaining heavy damage herself. The encounter changed the complexion of warfare on the Mississippi and helped to reverse Rebel fortunes on the river in the summer of 1862.
Year 1870
Reconstruction Era of the United States: Georgia becomes the last of the former Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.
Year 1870
Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory are transferred to Canada from the Hudson's Bay Company, and the province of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories are established from these vast territories.
Year 1888
The stratovolcano Mount Bandai erupts killing approximately 500 people, in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.
Year 1910
In his book Clinical Psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin gives a name to Alzheimer's disease, naming it after his colleague Alois Alzheimer.
Year 1916
In Seattle, Washington, William Boeing and George Conrad Westervelt incorporate Pacific Aero Products (later renamed Boeing).
Year 1918
World War I: The Second Battle of the Marne begins near the River Marne with a German attack.
Year 1920
The Polish Parliament establishes Silesian Voivodeship before the Polish-German plebiscite.
Year 1927
Massacre of July 15, 1927: Eighty-nine protesters are killed by the Austrian police in Vienna.
Year 1954
First flight of the Boeing 367-80, prototype for both the Boeing 707 and C-135 series.
Year 1955
Eighteen Nobel laureates sign the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons, later co-signed by thirty-four others.
Year 1959
The steel strike of 1959 begins, leading to significant importation of foreign steel for the first time in United States history.
Year 1966
Vietnam War: The United States and South Vietnam begin Operation Hastings to push the North Vietnamese out of the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone.
Year 1974
In Nicosia, Cyprus, Greek junta-sponsored nationalists launch a coup d'état, deposing President Makarios and installing Nikos Sampson as Cypriot president.
Year 1975
Space Race: Apollo-Soyuz Test Project features the dual launch of an Apollo spacecraft and a Soyuz spacecraft on the first joint Soviet-United States human-crewed flight. It was both the last launch of an Apollo spacecraft, and the Saturn family of rockets.
Year 1983
An attack at Orly Airport in Paris is launched by Armenian militant organisation ASALA; leaving eight people dead and 55 injured.
Year 1996
A Belgian Air Force C-130 Hercules carrying the Royal Netherlands Army marching band crashes on landing at Eindhoven Airport.
Year 1998
Sri Lankan Civil War: Sri Lankan Tamil MP S. Shanmuganathan is killed by a claymore mine.
Year 2002
"American Taliban" John Walker Lindh pleads guilty to supplying aid to the enemy and to possession of explosives during the commission of a felony.
Year 2002
Anti-Terrorism Court of Pakistan hands down the death sentence to British born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and life terms to three others suspected of murdering The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Year 2003
AOL Time Warner disbands Netscape. The Mozilla Foundation is established on the same day.
Year 2006
Twitter is launched, becoming one of the largest social media platforms in the world.
Year 2014
A train derails on the Moscow Metro, killing at least 24 and injuring more than 160 others.
Year ?
Titus and his armies breach the walls of Jerusalem. (17th of Tammuz in the Hebrew calendar).