“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Neil Armstrong steps onto the surface of the Moon.

Today in History

• The Seneca Falls Convention for women’s rights begins (1848)
• Ford ships its first automobile (1903)
• Adolf Hitler survives the “Bomb Plot” assassination attempt (1944)*
• Apollo 11 lands on the Moon (1969)
• A mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, kills 12 and wounds 70 (2012)
• The US and Cuba restore diplomatic relations after more than 50 years (2015)

* The “Bomb Plot” assassination attempt is the starting point for my alternate history novel with Douglas Niles, Fox on the Rhine.

Birthdays

• Alexander the Great, conqueror (356 BCE)
• Gregor Mendel, geneticist (1822)
• Alberto Santos-Dumont, aviation pioneer (1873)
• Edmund Hillary, first to climb Mount Everest (1919)
• Alistair MacLeod, writer (1936)
• Diana Rigg, actress (1938)
• Natalie Wood, actress (1938)
• Carlos Santana, musician (1947)

Deaths

• Peregrine White, first Pilgrim child born in the New World (1704)
• Andrey Markov, mathematician (1922)
• Pancho Villa, Mexican general (1923)
• Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of the Soviet secret police (1926)
• Guglielmo Marconi, inventor (1937)
• Bruce Lee, actor and martial artist (1973)
• James Doohan, played Scotty on Star Trek (2005)
• Tammy Faye Bakker, evangelical talk show host (2007)

Holidays and Celebrations

• Engineer’s Day (Costa Rica)
• Independence Day (Colombia)
• International Chess Day
• Lempira’s Day (Honduras)
• National Ice Cream Sundae Day (US)
• National Lollypop Day (US)
• Tree Planting Day (Central African Republic)
• World Jump Day

July 20 is the 201st day of the year (202nd in leap years). There are 164 days remaining until the end of the year.