July 12, 1810: Members of shoemakers' union face trial in New York City for striking to win wage increases.

July 13, 1786: Northwest Ordinance enacted, stating "the utmost good faith shall always be observed toward the Indians. ... in their property, rights, and liberty they shall never be disturbed."

July 14, 1798: Sedition Act of 1798 passes, making it a crime to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious" writing against the government, Congress, or the President.

July 15, 1955: Fifty-two Nobel laureates, led by Albert Einstein, call on all states to renounce force as an act of policy. Mainau, West Germany.

July 16, 1862: Birth of Ida B. Wells, journalist, activist and anti- lynching organizer. Holly Springs, Miss.

July 17, 1927: First aerial military bombing of a civilian population, by a U.S. Marine squadron of seven airplanes at Ocatal, Nicaragua, kills 300.

July 18, 1997: In Mumbai, at least 8,000 low-caste Indians riot after a funeral for 10 children killed by police.

July 19, 1968: In the wake of the King and Kennedy assassinations, the House votes down a bill that would have made mandatory the federal registration of guns.

July 20, 1944: Clique of German officers plots to kill Adolf Hitler and stage a coup. Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg left a briefcase concealing a time bomb at Hitler's feet during a meeting. The bomb killed four people, but a table shielded Hitler. In Berlin, conspirators took over, believing Hitler was dead. By midnight, they and von Stauffenberg had been shot.

July 21, 1896: National Association of Colored Women formed.

July 22, 1995: Four foreign activists break Israeli padlocks and reopen the main gates to Hebron University in the West Bank, closed by Israeli security in 1987. The gates remain open after the incident.

July 23, 1973: International Court grants injunction against French nuclear testing after petition by Australia and New Zealand.

July 24, 1942: Spanish anarcho-syndicalist theorist, militant, and former government official Juan Piero Belis executed for refusing to collaborate with the Franco dictatorship. Valencia, Spain.

July 25, 1972: US health officials concede blacks were used as guinea pigs in 40-year syphilis experiment.

July 26, 1847: Republic of Liberia, a West African nation founded by freed American slaves, formally becomes a country with the issuance of a Declaration of Independence closely modeled on the American Declaration.