May 8

July 22

1298 At the Battle of Falkirk, which took place on July 22, 1298, King Edward I of England's army included 10,900 Welshmen armed with the longbow. The longbow could shoot more arrows per minute than the crossbow. The devastating hail of the longbowmen (at a rate of six per minute) was often very demoralizing. The use of the longbow proved too much for William Wallace's Scots and revolutionized warfare.

1376 One of the oldest stories about rats is "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" who played some enchanted music on his pipe causing the rats to follow him out of the German town of Hamelin and into the River Weser. When the local folks refused to pay him he took revenge by playing his pipe for the children of Hamelin and leading them into a hole in a hillside, never to be seen again. According to Robert Browning's poem The Pied Piper Of Hamelin July 22, 1376 was the day the rat-catcher led the children out of Hamelin.


1461 In France the king's death was announced by the captain of the bodyguard from a window of the state department. He raised his truncheon above his head, broke it and threw the pieces into the crowd exclaiming loudly "Le Roi est mort!" Then he seized another staff and flourished it in the air and shouted "Vive le Roi!"  The declaration "the king is dead-long live the king!" was declared for the first time on the passing of King Charles VII on July 22, 1461.

1587 A group of 115 English settlers arrived on Roanoke Island off North Carolina on July 22, 1587 to establish a colony, under the governance of Sir Walter Raleigh's friend the artist John White, who had accompanied a previous expedition to Roanoke. White was unable to mount another resupply attempt for an additional three years and when the supply ships eventually returned, they couldn't find any of the colonists. Adding to the mystery, they found the word "CROATAN" carved into a tree.

The discovery of Croatoan painted by John White. 

1793 Scottish-Canadian explorer Alexander Mackenzie was the first recorded person to complete a transcontinental crossing of North America north of Mexico, He reached the westernmost point of his journey on July 22, 1793 and inscribed his name on a rock near the water's edge of Dean Channel in British Columbia, Canada. Mackenzie wrote the message with a reddish paint made of vermilion and bear grease, and turned back east.

1796 The surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company named an area in Ohio "Cleveland" on July 22, 1796 after General Moses Cleaveland, the superintendent of the surveying party. During the 19th century Cleveland's location at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River and Great Lakes port helped make it an important industrial center of the United States.

Bird's-eye view of Cleveland in 1877.

1850 US songwriter Stephen Foster married Jane Denny MacDowell on July 22, 1850 in Trinity Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh. He wrote “Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair" for her four years later.
They had one daughter, Marion, but their marriage was troubled and the couple separated.

1933 Three months after the first modern alleged sighting of the Loch Ness monster, interest was heightened by a sighting on July 22, 1933, when George Spicer and his wife saw "a most extraordinary form of animal" cross the road in front of their car.

1944 The Norwegian St Bernard Bamse died on July 22, 1944. Bamse became the heroic mascot of the Free Norwegian Forces during the Second World War. He was known for breaking up fights amongst his crewmates. Bamse once saved a young lieutenant commander who was being attacked by a man wielding a knife by pushing the assailant into the sea.

Bamse (St. Bernard) Wikipedia

1951 During the 1950s the Soviet space program used dogs for sub-orbital and orbital space flights to determine whether human spaceflight were feasible. Dezik and Tsygan were the first dogs to make a sub-orbital flight on July 22, 1951. They were placed in a detachable head portion of a V2 rocket and launched into the atmosphere. The rocket made it to an altitude of 68.35 miles then detached, and Dezik and Tsygan parachuted gently down to Earth’s surface. Both dogs were recovered unharmed.

1955 The loudest airplane ever built, the XF-84H Thunderstreak, earning the nickname the "Mighty Ear Banger". At idle power, the propeller would create continuous sonic booms that emitted visible shock waves. Anyone nearby, regardless of ear protection, suffered severe nausea, headaches, and it even caused one man to have a seizure. The Thunderstreak made its first flight on July 22, 1955 but was unable to overcome teething aerodynamic deficiencies, resulting in the program's cancellation.


1975 Stanley Forman took the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo Fire Escape Collapse on July 22, 1975.
The photograph, which is part of a series, shows 19-year-old Diana Bryant and her 2-year-old goddaughter Tiare Jones falling from the collapsed fire escape of a burning apartment building on Marlborough Street in Boston. It spurred action to improve the safety of fire escapes across the United States.

1992 In 1991 Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar agreed with the Colombian government he would serve a maximum prison term of five years and they wouldn't extradite him to the United States. The government agreed to build a prison overlooking the city of Medellín built to specifications ordered by Escobar, where he would be housed. Escobar escaped from his luxury prison, never to be arrested again on July 22, 1992 and was shot and killed by police in Medellín 18 months later.


1998 One of the founders of sleep research, Eugene Aserinsky, died on July 22, 1998 in a car crash after falling asleep at the wheel.  Aserinsky and his colleague, Nathaniel Kleitman, were the first to discover rapid eye movement (REM) sleep in 1953. Their research has had a profound impact on our understanding of sleep and its importance to human health.

2003 Members of 101st Airborne of the United States, aided by Special Forces, attacked a compound in Iraq on July 22, 2003. Saddam Hussein’s sons, Qusay and Uday Hussein, were killed after a three-hour stand off, along with Mustapha Hussein, Qusay's 14-year-old son, and a bodyguard.

2005 There is a Guinness World Record for the longest dive by a pig. Miss Piggy, owned by Australian Tom Vandeleur, leapt 10ft 10in, (3.31m) measured from the end of the board to where the snout enters the water) into a 34in deep pool in Darwin on July 22, 2005.


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