On the 1st August 1834, the Slavery Abolition Act came into force in the United Kingdom, although it had received royal assent a year earlier.

The English writer Daniel Defoe was put in the pillory for seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet.

The city of Baghdad was founded by the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mansur.

The Battle of Gravelines, the decisive battle of the Spanish Armada, took place off the coast of Flanders.

On the 28th July 1858 William Herschel, a British Magistrate in West Bengal in India, made the first modern use of fingerprints for identification.

On the 27th July 1942, Allied forces in North Africa stopped the advancing Axis powers in the First Battle of El Alamein.

On the 26th July 1936, Adolf Hitler informed General Francisco Franco that Germany would support his Nationalist rebellion in Spain.

On the 25th July 1965, American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan performed at the Newport Folk Festival with an electric band.

Often referred to as the ‘lost city of the Incas’, Machu Picchu was constructed in the middle of the 15th century but was abandoned barely a century later in 1572.

On the 23rd July 1914, Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia specifically designed to be rejected and lead to war between the two countries.

On the 22nd July 1706, the foundation for the establishment of the Kingdom of Great Britain was laid when commissioners from England and Scotland agreed the Acts of Union.

On the 21st July 1970, construction was completed on the Aswan High Dam in Egypt.

Napoleon granted a patent for the Pyréolophore to Nicéphore Niépce and his brother Claude.

The Franco-Prussian War began with a declaration of war by the French emperor, Napoleon III.