History for July 20

History for July 20 - On-This-Day.com
Sir Edmund Hillary 1919 - Explorer, first to climb Mt. Everest , Mike Ilitch 1929 - Founder of Little Caesar's Pizza franchises, owner of Detroit Red Wings, Chuck Daly 1933 


Diana Rigg 1938 - Actress (Medea, King Lear, The Avengers), Natalie Wood (Natasha Nikolaevna Gurdin) 1938 - Actress (From Here to Eternity, West Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause), Mickey (Mitchell Jack) Stanley 1942 - Baseball Player 


Carlos Santana 1947 - Musician (Santana), Donna Dixon 1957 - Actress (Wayne's World, Dr. Detroit), Josh Holloway 1969 - Actor ("Lost") 


1861 - The Congress of the Confederate States began holding sessions in Richmond, VA. 


1868 - Legislation that ordered U.S. tax stamps to be placed on all cigarette packs was passed. 


1881 - Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull, a fugitive since the Battle of the Little Big Horn, surrendered to federal troops. (Montana) 


1942 - The first detachment of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, (WACS) began basic training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa. 

1944 - An attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate Adolf Hitler failed. The bomb exploded at Hitler's Rastenburg headquarters. Hitler was only wounded. 


1969 - Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. became the first men to walk on the moon. 


1974 - Turkish forces invaded Cyprus. 


1976 - America's Viking I robot spacecraft made a successful landing on Mars. 


1985 - Treasure hunters began raising $400 million in coins and silver from the Spanish galleon "Nuestra Senora de Atocha." The ship sank in 1622 40 miles of the coast of Key West, FL. 


1998 - Russia won a $11.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to help avert the devaluation of its currency.