1099 - First Crusade: Christian soldiers take the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem after the final assault of a difficult siege.

1207 - John of England expels Canterbury monks for supporting Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton.

1240 - A Novgorodian army led by Alexander Nevsky defeats the Swedes in the Battle of the Neva.

1381 - John Ball, a leader in the Peasants' Revolt, is hanged, drawn and quartered in the presence of Richard II of England.

1410 - Battle of Grunwald: allied forces of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania defeat the army of the Teutonic Order.

1685 - James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth is executed at Tower Hill, England after his defeat at the Battle of Sedgemore on 6 July 1685.

1741 - Alexei Chirikov sights land in Southeast Alaska. He sends men ashore in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to visit Alaska.

1789 - Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette, is named by acclamation colonel-general of the new National Guard of Paris.

1799 - The Rosetta Stone is found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard during Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign.

1806 - Pike expedition: near St. Louis, Missouri, United States Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike begins an expedition from Fort Belle Fountaine to explore the west.

1815 - Napoléon Bonaparte surrenders aboard HMS Bellerophon.

1823 - A fire destroys the ancient Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome.

1870 - Reconstruction era of the United States: Georgia becomes the last of the former Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.

1870 - Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory are transferred to Canada from the Hudson's Bay Company, and the province of Manitoba and the North-West Territories are established from these vast territories.

1870 - The Kingdom of Prussia and the Second French Empire commence the Franco-Prussian War.

1888 - The stratovolcano Mount Bandai erupts killing approximately 500 people.

1916 - In Seattle, Washington, William Boeing and George Conrad Westervelt incorporate Pacific Aero Products (later renamed Boeing).

1918 - World War I: the Second Battle of the Marne begins near the River Marne with a German attack.

1927 - Massacre of July 15, 1927: 89 protesters are killed by the Austrian police in Vienna.

1929 - First weekly radio broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir radio show, Music and the Spoken Word.

1931 - Kid Chocolate becomes Cuba's first world boxing champion.

1934 - Continental Airlines commences operations.

1954 - First flight of the Boeing 367-80, prototype for both the Boeing 707 and C-135 series.

1955 - Eighteen Nobel laureates sign the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons, later co-signed by thirty-four others.

1959 - The steel strike of 1959 begins, leading to significant importation of foreign steel for the first time in United States history.

1974 - In Nicosia, Cyprus, Greek-sponsored nationalists launch a coup d'état, deposing President Makarios and installing Nikos Sampson as Cypriot president.

1979 - U.S. President Jimmy Carter gives his famous "malaise" speech, where he characterizes the greatest threat to the country as "this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation."

1994 - The new Ivybridge railway station, costing £380,000, opens in the town of Ivybridge, Devon, England.

1996 - A Belgian Air Force C-130 Hercules carrying the Royal Netherlands Army marching band crashes on landing at Eindhoven Airport.

1997 - In Miami, Florida, serial killer Andrew Phillip Cunanan guns down Gianni Versace outside his home.

2002 - "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh pleads guilty to supplying aid to the enemy and to possession of explosives during the commission of a felony.

2002 - Anti-Terrorism Court of Pakistan hands down the death sentence to British born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and life terms to three others suspected of murdering Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

2003 - AOL Time Warner disbands Netscape Communications Corporation. The Mozilla Foundation is established on the same day. 

2008 - John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchinson both vote to overturn George W Bush's veto of the Medicare Bill

He is down 10 to 1 in campaign funds so we need a nationwide push for Rick please send this link to any and all Democrats and post it on any and all Democratic sites this is important

http://www.ricknoriega.com/

July 15, 2008, 1:53AM

Noriega losing fundraising race
He has $915,000 to get message out, while Cornyn has $9 million in the bank

By R.G. RATCLIFFE
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

AUSTIN — Houston Democrat Rick Noriega's uphill campaign to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn began a year ago as a populist battle. But, with 113 days left until the election, Noriega has yet to show he can fan embers into a prairie fire.

Noriega's biggest problem is money, not having enough to get his message out to a statewide audience that can only be reached by television advertising, which costs as much as $1.4 million a week for a saturation buy.

Campaign finance reports to be filed today will show Cornyn has more than $9 million in the bank, while Noriega has $915,000.

Almost half of the $930,000 that Noriega raised in the quarter ending June 30 came from the national Democratic Web site ActBlue. The Daily Kos, a left-leaning Web site that has been supportive of Noriega from the start, called his recent fundraising "a disappointing take."

The money shortage aggravates the fact that, according to polling, Noriega is only a little better known among Texans today than when he started his campaign. As a candidate, Noriega is described only as "improved" by many political observers. And his campaign message appears more geared to national-party talking points than to connecting with Texans.

"They're where they needed to be 18 months before an election," Ross Ramsey, editor of the Austin newsletter Texas Weekly, said of the campaign.

The wild cards for Noriega, Ramsey said, are the uncertainties of this political year and the ability of Democrats to capitalize on them the way the GOP did in 1994 under Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution.

"If it is to the Democrats what 1994 was to Republicans, Noriega could jump up and surprise them," Ramsey said.

In Texas, Democrats had a record primary turnout of 2.8 million voters this year because of the presidential contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. But more than 700,000 of those people did not cast a vote in the next race on the ballot: the four-way contest for the Senate nomination that Noriega won.

Obama's candidacy is expected to result in a record African-American voter turnout in November, and his campaign has said that will help down-ballot Texas Democrats. But Obama's aides are ceding Texas to Republican John McCain.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5888131.html

By Jason Embry | Monday, July 14, 2008, 04:39 PM

A Houston lobbyist who suggested that a six-figure contribution to the Bush presidential library could help land a meeting with top White House officials twice served as campaign vice chairman to U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

Lobbyist Stephen Payne also has bragged about developing a newspaper column that Hutchison authored, and he worked for Hutchison more than a decade ago.

The Times of London posted video Sunday of Payne meeting with a man claiming to be a representative for Askar Akayev, the former president of Kyrgazstan in Central Asia, last week at a London hotel. Akayev is in exile in Moscow after being forced from office three years ago, and he was seeking to meet with top U.S. officials to help rehabilitate his image, his purported representative said.

Payne replied that he couldn’t promise a meeting with Bush.

“I think that some things could be done,” Payne said. “I think that the family, children, whatever, should probably look at making a contribution to the Bush library.”

http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/washington/washington/entries/2008/07/14/payne_has_ties.html

Texas' two Republican senators, Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, will vote to override President Bush's veto of legislation that prevents a reduction in Medicare reimbursement to doctors.

The legislation passed the House overwhelmingly and won Senate approval last week, 69 to 30. It has strong support of doctors from around the country, and the Texas Medical Association strongly lobbied the state's lawmakers on the issue.

Hutchison and Cornyn joined two dozen Republicans in voting for the measure, which President Bush opposed. They earlier had voted with Republican colleagues to block the measure but changed positions under intense pressure from the medical community.

The next chapter in this political saga started today when President Bush vetoed the legislation. The House moved quickly and voted overwhelmingly to override the President's action.

In the Senate, supporters of the measure can only afford to lose the votes of two Republicans. This afternoon, spokesmen for both Texas senators told Texas on the Potomac that the two Republicans would vote to nullify the President's action.

http://blogs.chron.com/txpotomac/

And all though I did not see these signs they reminded me of what I did see