History Today

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on July 15th. An estimated 500 million tweets are sent every day, and it all started back on this day in 2006, when Twitter was launched by the San Francisco podcasting company Odeo. Twitter was the brainchild of then-Odeo engineer Jack Dorsey and was initially conceived of as a way to share personal status updates via SMS to groups of people.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on July 14th. Today is Bastille Day, which commemorates the day in 1789 when French rebels stormed Paris’ Bastille fortress, a symbol of the French monarchy. The storming of the Bastille marked the beginning of the French Revolution, a decade of political turmoil and terror in which tens of thousands of people, including King Louis XVI and his wife Marie-Antoinette, were executed.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on July 13th. With concerts cancelled and postponed across the country, we look back to this day in 1985 and Live Aid, the 16-hour “superconcert” that was broadcast to more than a billion viewers in 110 countries.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on July 12th. As the country speculates about who Joe Biden will choose as his running mate, we look back to this day in 1984 when Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman to be a major party nominee for vice president of the United States. In the end however, Ferraro and Walter Mondale lost to Ronald Reagan and George Bush in a landslide for the Republicans. Surprising fact? After making two unsuccessful U.S.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on July 11th. Thanks to the musical Hamilton, Americans have a newfound appreciation for Alexander Hamilton, whose uniquely American story came to an end on this day in 1804 when he was shot in a duel by then-Vice President Aaron Burr. He died the next day.

Hello and welcome to This Day in History. Here's what happened on July 10th. Keep calm and carry on. Today’s it’s a social media mantra, but during World War II, it was the mindset that carried the British through the Battle of Britain, which began on this day in 1940. The three-and-a-half month long German bombing campaign was the largest sustained bombing campaign of its time.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on July 9th. Today, there are more than 36,000 women serving as officers in the U.S. military, but until this day in 1947 there wasn’t a single one. That’s when General Dwight D. Eisenhower named Florence Blanchfield a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, making her the very first U.S. woman to hold a permanent military rank.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on July 8th. On this day in 1776, “Let freedom ring” was more than just a song lyric--that’s when the Liberty Bell famously tolled to summon Philadelphia citizens for the first reading of the Declaration of Independence.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on July 7th. The Hoover Dam is one of the most impressive engineering feats in American history, and it all began on this day in 1930, when construction started on the massive project. Over the next five years, a total of 21,000 men would work ceaselessly to produce what would be the largest dam of its time, as well as one of the largest manmade structures in the world.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on July 6th. With the Major League Baseball Season scheduled to finally get underway in just a couple of weeks, we look back to to the birth of one of its most beloved traditions. On this day in 1933, the first MLB All-Star game was played.