Last of British Marines leave Afghanistan
2002 - The last British Royal Marines left Afghanistan, after six months tracking the remnants of Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaida network without once engaging the enemy. Around 130 soldiers from 45 Commando boarded a chartered Portuguese commercial jet at Kabul airport to fly to Prestwick in Scotland for debriefing and then home leave, the last of a force that numbered over 1,700 at its peak. The marines arrived in Afghanistan in February on Operation Jacana, a mission aimed at putting highly-trained rapid-reaction forces into areas where Al Qaida fighters and the remnants of Afghanistan’s deposed Taliban regime had been spotted. But the marines never found their target — if it existed at all.
July 19
1864 - Nanking, the capital of the Taiping rebellion in China, falls to government troops who proceed to slaughter 100,000 people.
1870 - France declares war on Prussia, starting the Franco-Prussian War.
1877 - In the first Wimbledon Tennis Championship men’s final, Spencer W. Gore beats W.C. Marshall.
1939 - American physician Roy P. Scholz of St Louis, Missouri, becomes first surgeon to use fibreglass sutures.
1947 - The Prime Minister of the shadow Burmese government, Bogyoke Aung San, and six of his cabinet and two non-cabinet members, are assassinated.
1969 - Apollo 11 enters the orbit of the Moon.
1979 - Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinistas claim revolutionary victory.
1980 - Former Turkish prime minister Nihat Erim is assassinated in Istanbul.
1982 - David S. Dodge is kidnapped from the American University of Beirut, becomes the first American hostage in Lebanon.
1985 - Nearly 300 people are killed when a dam bursts in northern Italy, sweeping away three hotels and several homes.
1991 - Kurds protesting Iraqi rule fight government soldiers in first major clashes since the withdrawal of allied forces.
1994 - North Korean leader Kim Il-sung gets an emotional farewell.
1996 - Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadžic resigns after being indicted for war crimes.
2001 - British politician and best-selling novelist Jeffrey Archer is jailed for four years for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
2004 - Iraq appoints 43 new ambassadors in its first move to re-engage with the world after regaining sovereignty from the US.
2005 - Insurgents set off a bomb near a police minibus in Chechnya, killing 14 people.
2006 - A cruise ship carrying more than 1,000 Americans sails out of Beirut’s port in the first mass US evacuation from Lebanon.
2007 - Twenty-three South Korean Christian aid workers taken hostage.
2008 - Pope Benedict XVI apologises for the first time for years of abuse of minors by the Catholic clergy.
2012 - Former Egyptian vice-president Omar Sulaiman dies in US hospital at the age of 77.
