History for July 20

History for July 20 - On-This-Day.com
Francesco Petrarch 1304, 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)


1801 - A 1,235 pound cheese ball was pressed at the farm of Elisha Brown, Jr. The ball of cheese was later loaded on a horse-driven wagon and presented to U.S. President Thomas Jefferson at the White House.


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)


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.


1982 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan pulled the U.S. out of comprehensive test ban negotiations indefinitely.


1992 - Vaclav Havel, the playwright who led the Velvet Revolution against communism, stepped down as president of Czechoslovakia.


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