July 20:

Events

• 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Peachtree Creek – Near Atlanta, Georgia, Confederate forces led by General John Bell Hood unsuccessfully attack Union troops under General William T. Sherman.
• 1877 – Rioting in Baltimore, Maryland by Baltimore and Ohio Railroad workers is put down by the state militia, resulting in nine deaths.
• 1881 – Indian Wars:Sioux Chief Sitting Bull leads the last of his fugitive people in surrender to US troops at Fort Buford, North Dakota
• 1894 – The troops sent by Grover Cleveland to Chicago to end the Pullman Strike are recalled.
• 1898 – Spanish–American War: A boiler explodes on the USS Iowa off the coast of Santiago de Cuba.
• 1903 – Ford Motor Company shipped its first car.
• 1907 – A train wreck on the Pere Marquette Railroad near Salem, Michigan kills thirty and injures seventy more.
• 1921 – Airmail service begins between New York City and San Francisco.
• 1921 – Congresswoman Alice Mary Robertson became the first woman to preside over the US House of Representatives.
• 1926 – A convention of the Methodist Church votes to allow women to become priests.
• 1932 – In Washington, D.C., police fire tear gas on World War I veterans part of the Bonus Expeditionary Force who attempt to march to the White House.
• 1934 – Labor unrest in the US, as police in Minneapolis fire upon striking truck drivers, wounding fifty; Seattle police led by the mayor police fire tear gas on and club 2,000 striking longshoremen, and the governor of Oregon calls out the National Guard to break a strike on the Portland docks.
• 1937 – Two black men accused of stabbing a policeman are taken by a mob from the county jail in Tallahassee, Florida and lynched.
• 1938 – The Justice Department files suit in New York City against the motion picture industry charging violations of anti-trust law. The case would eventually result in a break-up of the industry in 1948.
• 1940 – US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Hatch Act of 1939, limiting political activity by Federal government employees.
• 1942 – World War II: The first unit of the Women's Army Corps begins training in Des Moines, Iowa.
• 1943 – World War II: American and Canadian troops conquer Enna on Sicily.
• 1944 – World War II: American troops land on Guam near Port Apra.
• 1945 – The US Congress approves the Bretton Woods Agreement.
• 1946 – World War II: The US Congress's Pearl Harbor Committee says Franklin D. Roosevelt was completely blameless for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and calls for a unified command structure in the armed forces.
• 1948 – US President Harry S. Truman issues a peacetime military draft in the US amid increasing tensions with the Soviet Union.
• 1948 – In New York City, twelve leaders of the Communist Party USA are indicted under the Smith Act including William Z. Foster and Gus Hall.
• 1950 – Cold War: In Philadelphia, Harry Gold pleads guilty to spying for the Soviet Union by passing secrets from atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs.
• 1960 – The Polaris missile is successfully launched from a submarine, the USS George Washington, for the first time.
• 1965 – In Hayneville, Alabama, two civil rights protesters, one a priest and the other a seminarian, are shot by a deputy sheriff. The seminarian dies of his wounds.
• 1969 – Apollo Program: Apollo 11 successfully lands the first man on the Moon.
• 1973 – The US Senate passes the War Powers Act.
• 1973 – Vietnam War: In testimony by Assistant Secretary of Defense Jerry Friedheim to the US Senate Committee on Armed Services, the US Defense Department admits it lied to US Congress about bombing Cambodia .
• 1974 – Turkish occupation of Cyprus: Forces from Turkey invade Cyprus after a "coup d' etat", organised by the dictator of Greece, against president Makarios. NATO's Council praises the US and the United Kingdom for attempts to settle the dispute. Syria and Egypt put their militaries on alert.
• 1976 – The Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars.
• 1976 – Vietnam War: The US military completes its troop withdrawal from Thailand.
• 1977 – Johnstown is hit by a flash flood that kills eighty and causes $350 million in damage.
• 1977 – The Central Intelligence Agency releases documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind control experiments.
• 1984 – Officials of the Miss America pageant ask Vanessa Lynn Williams to quit after Penthouse published nude photos of her.
• 1989 – Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's show opens at Washington, D.C.'s Project for the Arts after the Smithsonian Institution's Corcoran Gallery cancels it.
• 1995 – The Regents of the University of California vote to end all affirmative action in the UC system by 1997.
• 2000 – The leaders of Salt Lake City's bid to win the 2002 Winter Olympics are indicted by a federal grand jury for bribery, fraud, and racketeering.