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Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was a German army officer and Catholic aristocrat who reached the rank of colonel and was one of the leading officers of the failed July 20 plot of 1944 to kill German dictator Adolf Hitler and seize power in Germany. Stauffenberg found some aspects of the Nazi Party’s ideology repugnant; although he agreed with its nationalistic aspects, he never became a member of the party.

Stauffenberg’s part in the original plan required him to stay at the offices in Berlin from where he would phone regular army units all over Europe and the Reich in an attempt to convince them to arrest leaders of Nazi political organizations. However, he was forced to kill Hitler far away from Berlin and to trigger the military machine in Berlin during the office hours of the very same day.

He was the only conspirator who had regular access to Hitler by mid-1944 and the only officer to have the resolve and persuasive power to convince German military leaders to throw in the with the coup once Hitler was dead. On July 20, armed with two small bombs contained in a briefcase, Stauffenberg nearly succeeded in blowing up Hitler at a meeting but the dictator escaped with only slight injuries as he was shielded by the blast by a heavy, solid oak conference table.

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The SS Great Britain was the first ocean-going ship to have an iron hull and a screw propeller and, when launched, was the largest vessel afloat. She originally carried 120 first-class passengers, 132 second-class passengers, and 130 officers and crew. When an extra deck was added, it increased the number of passengers to 730.

The SS Great Britain was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Thomas Guppy, Christopher Claxton, and William Patterson for the Great Western Steamship Company and built in a specially adapted dry dock in Bristol, England. Weather conditions on the day of the launch were generally favorable with large crowds gathering, eagerly anticipating the unfurling of the Royal Emblem. Prince Albert boarded the ship and inspected it at 12 noon.

She was towed away from her builders to have her engines and interior fitted out on the River Thames. She was moored in the Floating Harbour for a year or more before proceeding into Cumberland Basin in December 1944. At the time of her launch in 1843, she was by far the largest ship in the world, over 100 feet longer than her rivals, and the first screw-propelled, ocean-going wrought iron ship.

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Hunter S. Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky on July 18, 1937. During a two year stint in the Air Force he worked as a sports reporter for the base newspaper. There were two significant pre-occupations that were constant subjects in his writing: sports and politics. His first book, Hell’s Angels, was an inside look at the infamous biker gang and resulted in Thompson getting beaten up by some bikers for his troubles. It was published in 1966 and established him as one of the shining new stars of the New Journalism movement of the ‘60s that included Tom Wolfe, but he refused to be pigeon-holed and carved out with his own unique vision.

The origins for his most famous work — Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas — started off quite humbly. Thompson was assigned to write captions for a photo-essay on the Mint 400 off-road motorcycle race in Las Vegas for Sports Illustrated magazine. At some point, the editor for Rolling Stone magazine heard that Thompson was in Vegas and asked him to also cover the National District Attorneys Association’s Third Annual Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. When Sports Illustrated rejected his work Thompson took the Rolling Stone gig. Objectivity was thrown out the window in favor of a highly personal form of reporting.  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was first published in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971.

In 1970, Thompson ran for sheriff of Aspen as the Freak Power candidate and lost by only a handful of votes after campaigning for the legalization of drugs and for Aspen to be renamed Fat City. Thompson was immortalized in film first by Bill Murray in the cinematic misfire known as Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) and by Johnny Depp in the warped masterpiece, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998). Hunter was also the inspiration for Uncle Duke, right down to his trademark aviator sunglasses and cigarette holder, in Garry Trudeau’s popular comic strip, Doonesbury. Thompson was not always crazy about how he was portrayed by others, infamously threatening to disembowel Murray the next time they met and claimed that he would set Trudeau on fire. Over the years he made peace with both men.

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The Spanish Civil War was a major conflict in Spain that started after an attempted coup d’état committed by parts of the army against the government of the Second Spanish Republic. The Civil War devastated Spain from July 17, 1936 to April 1, 1939, ending with victory of the rebels and the founding of a dictatorship led by the Nationalist General Francisco Franco.

The supporters of the Republic gained the support of the Soviet Union and Mexico, while the followers of the First Rebellion, nacionales, received the support of the major European Axis powers – Italy, Germany, and Portugal. The war increased tensions in the lead-up to the Second World War. The advent of mass media allowed an unprecedented level of attention and so the war became notable for the passion and political division it inspired, and for atrocities committed on both sides of the conflict.

On July 17, 1936, the nationalist-traditionalist rebellion, long feared by some in the popular front government, began. Exiled military officers suspected of conspiracy against the Republic took control of the Balearic and Canary Islands. Franco was flown to Spanish Morocco where the Spanish Army of Africa, led by Nationalist ranks, was almost unopposed in assuming control. The rising was intended to be a swift coup d’état, but was botched and the government was able to retain control of only part of the country.

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Born in New York City as Ruby Catherine Stevens, Barbara Stanwyck was a four-time Academy Award-nominated, three-time Emmy Award-winning, and Golden Globe-winning American actress of film, stage, and screen. She is ranked as the eleventh greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute.

Stanwyck’s mother died when she was two-years-old and her father abandoned the family when she was age four. She began working at 13, and was a fashion model and Ziegfeld Girl by 15. In 1926, she began performing at the Hudson Theater in the drama, The Noose, which became one of the biggest hit plays of the season. Stanwyck earned rave reviews and was summoned to make a screen test for the silent film, Broadway Nights.

Stanwyck starred in almost 100 films during her career and received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her roles in Stella Dallas, Ball of Fire, Double Indemnity, and Sorry, Wrong Number. Perhaps her most famous role was in the 1941 film, The Lady Eve, in which she starred with Henry Fonda. When he film career declined in 1957, she moved to television. She died of congestive heart disease in Santa Monica, California on January 20, 1990.

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The Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls is one of four churches considered to be the great ancient basilicas of Rome. Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, named in 2005, is the current archpriest of this basilica. The basilica was founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine I over what was believed to be the burial place of Saint Paul, where it was said, that after the Apostle’s execution, his followers erected a memorial over his grave.

In 386, began the erection of a much larger basilica with a nave and four aisles with a transept. In the 5^th century, it was even larger than the Old St. Peter’s Basilica. The basilica was damaged during the Saracen invasion in the 9^th century and as a result Pope John VIII fortified it and the monastery.

On July 15, 1823, a fire started through the negligence of a workman who was replacing the lead of the roof, resulting in the almost total destruction of the basilica. The whole world contributed to its reconstruction with contributions from Egypt and Russia. The basilica was reopened in 1840.

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The Storming of the Bastille occurred on July 14, 1789. Even though the medieval fortress and prison, known as the Bastille, only contained seven prisoners, its fall was the flashpoint of the French Revolution and it subsequently became an icon of the French Republic. In France, this day is a public holiday, formally known as Federation Holiday or Bastille Day.

During the reign of Louis XVI, France faced a major financial crisis that was triggered by the cost of being involved in the American War of Independence and made worse by an unequal system of taxation. Following the storming of the Bastille on July 14, the revolution began to grow. This was the third stage with the first being the revolt of the nobility and the second being the formation of the National Assembly. The third stage also included the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

The middle class had formed the National Guard and sported the tricolor rosettes of red, white and blue which became the symbol of the revolution. Paris was close to insurrection and a crowd broke open the prisons of the Abbaye to release some grenadiers of the French guards, reportedly imprisoned for refusing to fire on the people.

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Live Aid was a multi-venue rock music concert held on July 13, 1985. The event was organized by musicians Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia. Billed as the “global jukebox,” the main sites for the event were Wembley Stadium, London (attended by 82,000 people) and JFK Stadium, Philadelphia (attended by about 99,000 people). It was one of the largest-scale satellite link-ups and television broadcasts of all time: an estimated 1.5 billion viewers, across 100 countries, watched the live broadcast.

The concert was conceived as a follow-up to another Geldof/Ure project, the successful charity single, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” performed by a collection of British and Irish music acts billed as “Band Aid.” The concert grew in scope as more acts were added on both sides of the Atlantic. As a charity fundraiser, the concert far exceeded its goals: they hoped to raise one million pounds and the final figure was 150 million pounds. No previous concert had ever brought together so many famous performers from the past and present. In 2005, a follow-up concert called Live 8 was held simultaneously in several countries.

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William Henry Cosby, Jr. was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and is an American comedian, actor, television producer, and activist. A veteran stand-up performer, he got his start at various clubs then landed a vanguard role in the 1960s action show I Spy. He later starred in his own series, The Bill Cosby Show, in the late 1960s.

Cosby was one of the major characters on the children’s television show The Electric Company for its first two season, and created the humorous educational cartoon series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, about a group of young friends growing up in the city. During the 1980s, Cosby produced and starred in what is considered one of the decade’s defining sitcoms, The Cosby Show, which lasted eight seasons from 1984 to 1992, and is still in syndication. The sitcom highlighted the experiences and growth of an upper middle-class African-American family. It was an immediate success, debuting near the top of the ratings and staying there for most of its long run.

In the 1990s, Cosby starred in Cosby, which first aired in 1996, hosted Kids Say the Darndest Things, which began in 1998, and appeared in a number of movies. His good-natured, fatherly image has made him a popular personality and garnered him the nickname of “America’s Dad.” He has also been a sought-after spokesman for products like Jell-O Pudding.

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The Aaron Burr-Alexander Hamilton duel was between two prominent American politicians – sitting Vice President Burr and the former Secretary of Treasury Hamilton. Burr shot and mortally wounded Hamilton who was carried to the home of William Bayard on the Manhattan shore. There Hamilton died at 2 am on July 12, 1804.

In the early morning hours of July 11, 1804, Burr and Hamilton departed by separate boats from Manhattan and rowed across the Hudson River to a spot known as the Heights of Weehawken in New Jersey, a popular dueling ground. Burr reached the site first and Hamilton arrived minutes later. Because he had been challenged, Hamilton had choice of both weapon and position.

Two shots were fired with Hamilton firing first and into the air. Burr returned fire and hit Hamilton in the lower abdomen above the right hip. There was considerable damage to his internal organs. It is entirely uncertain which principal fired first. Hamilton was buried in the Trinity Churchyard Cemetery in Manhattan. Burr was charged with murder in New York and New Jersey but neither charge reached trial. He fled to South Carolina where his daughter lived with her family but soon returned to Washington, D.C. to serve out the rest of Vice Presidency term.

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