July 20 1874: Gen. Custer and first official exploring expedition enters Black Hills with 110 wagons and 1,000 men, in direct violation of treaty of 1868 that barred whites from sacred hills.

July 21 1981: Creationism law requiring equal teaching with evolution passed, Louisiana.

July 22 1942: Deportation begins of 310,000 Jews from Nazi-controlled Warsaw Ghetto to Belzac and Treblinka, Poland.

July 23 1846: Protesting slavery and US involvement in the Mexican War, Henry David Thoreau refuses to pay his $1 poll tax. Jailed, he is inspired to write "On Civil Disobedience."

July 24 1974: House Judiciary Committee debates Pres. Nixon's articles of impeachment. US Supreme Court unanimously rules Pres. Nixon must turn over Watergate tapes.

July 25 1990: US Ambassador April Gillespie tells Iraq that US won't take sides in Iraq-Kuwait dispute.

July 26 1947: Under the National Security Act, US armed forces consolidated in newly created Department of Defense. Legislation also creates CIA, NSA, and other secret "black budget" government agencies outside public review.

July 27 1954: Democratically elected goverment of Jacabo Arbenz overthrown by CIA-paid mercenaries. The US establishes a right-wing dictatorship which has waged a genocidal war against Guatemala's indigenous rural population ever since.

July 28 1968: American Indian Movement (AIM) founded in Minneapolis to deal with problems of relocated urban Indians.

July 29 1968: Riots rock Seattle's Central Area after a police raid on the local Black Panther Party headquarters. Seattle BPP leader Aaron Dixon is arrested for possession of a stolen typewriter. (He is later acquitted.) Sixty-nine are arrested in riots over the following three days.

July 30 1956: "In God We Trust" is adopted as the official motto of the United States of America.

July 31 1964: Tonkin Gulf Hoax incidents begin.

Aug. 1 1983: US resumes making chemical weapons after 14 year's suspension.

Aug. 2 1931: Albert Einstein urges all scientists to refuse military work. 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait, after discussing plans with US Ambassador April Gillespie.

Aug. 3 1981: 11,500 air traffic controllers (PATCO) go on strike. Eventually, Pres. Reagan will fire them all, breaking the union and setting the tone for a decade of corporate- and government- imposed losses for unions nationwide.

Aug. 4 1995: Pres. Clinton orders an end to the Cold War-era prohibition against granting security clearances to gays.

Aug. 5 1964: US begins bombing North Vietnam.

Aug. 6 1945: US drops atomic bomb on civilian population of Hiroshima, Japan. An estimated 140,000 die from the immediate effects of the bombing; tens of thousands more in subsequent decades from radiation- induced illnesses. 1975: Twenty-three hundred scientists deliver warning on dangers of nuclear power to White House.

Aug. 7 1990: President George H.W. Bush (and former CIA head) orders deployment of US troops to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region.

Aug. 8 1444: Portuguese slaver Henry the Navigator unloads six ships of human cargo (slaves) from Africa.

Aug. 9 1945: US drops atomic bomb on civilian population of Nagasaki, Japan. An estimated 70,000 die from the immediate effects of the bombing.