July 9, 1982

Michael Fagan, an unemployed Irish father of four, broke into Buckingham Palace. After wandering around for a while, he eventually found his way into the Queen's bedroom. The Queen woke up and Fagan sat on the edge of her bed and talked to her for about ten minutes. When he asked for a cigarette, the Queen was able to call a footman who then held Fagan until police arrived.

Fagan was charged with the theft of a bottle of wine, but charges were dropped when he was committed for psychiatric evaluation.

July 9 1947:

In a ceremony held at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia,
General Dwight D. Eisenhower appoints Florence Blanchfield to be a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army,
making her the first woman in U.S. history to hold permanent military rank.

A member of the Army Nurse Corps since 1917, Blanchfield secured her commission following the passage of the Army-Navy Nurse Act of 1947 by Congress.
Blanchfield had served as superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps during World War II and was instrumental in securing passage of the Army-Navy Nurse Act,
which was advocated by Representative Frances Payne Bolton.
In 1951, Blanchfield received the Florence Nightingale Award from the International Red Cross.
In 1978, a U.S. Army hospital in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was named in her honor.

July 10,1925 : Monkey Trial begins

In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins with John
Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of
teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law.

The law, which had been passed in March, made it a misdemeanor
punishable by fine to "teach any theory that denies the story of the
Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead
that man has descended from a lower order of animals." With local
businessman George Rappalyea, Scopes had conspired to get charged with
this violation, and after his arrest the pair enlisted the aid of the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to organize a defense. Hearing
of this coordinated attack on Christian fundamentalism, William
Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate and a
fundamentalist hero, volunteered to assist the prosecution. Soon
after, the great attorney Clarence Darrow agreed to join the ACLU in
the defense, and the stage was set for one of the most famous trials
in U.S. history.

On July 10, the Monkey Trial got underway, and within a few days
hordes of spectators and reporters had descended on Dayton as
preachers set up revival tents along the city's main street to keep
the faithful stirred up. Inside the Rhea County Courthouse, the
defense suffered early setbacks when Judge John Raulston ruled against
their attempt to prove the law unconstitutional and then refused to
end his practice of opening each day's proceeding with prayer.

Outside, Dayton took on a carnival-like atmosphere as an exhibit
featuring two chimpanzees and a supposed "missing link" opened in
town, and vendors sold Bibles, toy monkeys, hot dogs, and lemonade.
The missing link was in fact Jo Viens of Burlington, Vermont, a
51-year-old man who was of short stature and possessed a receding
forehead and a protruding jaw. One of the chimpanzees--named Joe
Mendi--wore a plaid suit, a brown fedora, and white spats, and
entertained Dayton's citizens by monkeying around on the courthouse
lawn.

In the courtroom, Judge Raulston destroyed the defense's strategy by
ruling that expert scientific testimony on evolution was
inadmissible--on the grounds that it was Scopes who was on trial, not
the law he had violated. The next day, Raulston ordered the trial
moved to the courthouse lawn, fearing that the weight of the crowd
inside was in danger of collapsing the floor.

In front of several thousand spectators in the open air, Darrow
changed his tactics and as his sole witness called Bryan in an attempt
to discredit his literal interpretation of the Bible. In a searching
examination, Bryan was subjected to severe ridicule and forced to make
ignorant and contradictory statements to the amusement of the crowd.
On July 21, in his closing speech, Darrow asked the jury to return a
verdict of guilty in order that the case might be appealed. Under
Tennessee law, Bryan was thereby denied the opportunity to deliver the
closing speech he had been preparing for weeks. After eight minutes of
deliberation, the jury returned with a guilty verdict, and Raulston
ordered Scopes to pay a fine of $100, the minimum the law allowed.
Although Bryan had won the case, he had been publicly humiliated and
his fundamentalist beliefs had been disgraced. Five days later, on
July 26, he lay down for a Sunday afternoon nap and never woke up.

In 1927, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the Monkey Trial
verdict on a technicality but left the constitutional issues
unresolved until 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a
similar Arkansas law on the grounds that it violated the First
Amendment.

July 11, 1805

Vice-President Aaron Burr meets with Alexander Hamilton in Weehauken, New Jersey, for a duel. Hamiton apparently pointed the gun towards the air and shot above, but Burr shot Hamilton towards his heart. Hamilton suffered a fatal wound and dies the following day.

July 12, 1984 : Ferraro named vice presidential candidate

Walter Mondale, the leading Democratic presidential candidate,
announces that he has chosen Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New
York as his running mate. Ferraro, a daughter of Italian immigrants,
had previously gained notoriety as a vocal advocate of women's rights
in Congress.

Four days after Ferraro was named vice presidential candidate,
Governor Mario Cuomo of New York opened the Democratic National
Convention in San Francisco with an impassioned retort to Republican
President Ronald Reagan's contention that the United States was a
"shining city on a hill." Citing widespread poverty and racial strife,
Cuomo derided President Reagan as oblivious to the needs and problems
of many of America's citizens. His enthusiastic keynote address
inaugurated a convention that saw Ferraro become the first woman
nominated by a major party for the vice presidency. However, Mondale,
the former U.S. vice president under Jimmy Carter, proved a lackluster
choice for the Democratic presidential nominee.

On November 6, President Reagan and Vice President George Bush
defeated the Mondale-Ferraro ticket in the greatest Republican
landslide in U.S. history. The Republicans carried every state but
Minnesota--Mondale's home state.

Ferraro left Congress in 1985. In 1992 and 1998, she made unsuccessful
bids for a U.S. Senate seat. During President Bill Clinton's
administration, she was a permanent member on the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights.