July 1

• July 1, 69
  Roman general Vespasian is proclaimed emperor by the army in Egypt under Tiberius Julius Alexander, starting Flavian Dynasty
• July 1, 600
  Sutton Hoo helmet, one of the most important Anglo-Saxon artefacts, is left among other ceremonial artefacts in the ship-burial in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia
• July 1, 1390
  A French and Genoese armada sail out against Barbary pirates
• July 1, 1569
  The Union of Lublin replaces the personal union of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with an elective monarchy and creates the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth for protection against the growing power of Muscovite Russia
• July 1, 1596
  An English fleet under the Earl of Essex, Lord Howard of Nottingham and Francis Vere capture and sack Cadiz, Spain
• July 1, 1634
  Gian Lorenzo Bernini, an Italian artist and a prominent architect, completes bronze St. Peter's Baldachin in St. Peter's Basilica, which becomes one of the earliest examples of Baroque sculpture
• July 1, 1643
  Westminster Assembly, a synod composed of theologians and members of Parliament appointed to restructure the Church of England, begins
• July 1, 1690
  Led by Marshall Luxembourg, the French defeat the forces of the Grand Alliance at Fleurus in the Netherlands
• July 1, 1798
  Shortly after disembarkment at Alexandria forces of Napoleon Bonaparte break into the city of Alexandria in Egypt and takes it
• July 1, 1823
  The United Provinces of Central America, a state consisting of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and San Salvador, gains independence from Mexico
• July 1, 1849
  Henry David Thoreau, an American author, publishes his essay Resistance to Civil Government, an argument for disobedience to an unjust state
• July 1, 1850
  Rudolf Clausius, a German physicist, publishes the basic ideas of the second law of thermodynamics, stating that in a natural thermodynamic process, there is an increase in the sum of the entropies of the participating systems
• July 1, 1858
  The works "On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties" by British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and "Extract from an unpublished Work on Species" by Charles Darwin, announce the theory of evolution by natural selection to the Linnean Society of London
• July 1, 1862
  In Seven Days Battles Confederate General Robert E. Lee drove the invading Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by major general George B. McClellan
• July 1, 1863
  The opening shot at the Battle of Gettysburg, the American Civil War's turning point, at 7:30 a.m. begins the first day's fighting at Gettysburg, in which Federal forces retreat through the town and dug in at Cemetery Ridge and Cemetery Hill
• July 1, 1867
  Dominion of Canada is formed from three British colonies by Constitution Act, issued by Queen Victoria, making Canada a self-governing dominion of Great Britain
• July 1, 1885
  Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, writes philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which points to human as a transition between apes and the "Übermensch", or "overman"
• July 1, 1898
  American troops take San Juan Hill and El Caney, Cuba, from the Spaniards
• July 1, 1916
  British suffer over 50,000 casualties in the first day of the Battle of the Somme, one of humanity's bloodiest battles, fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire
• July 1, 1944
  Bretton Woods Conference starts, establishing International Monetary Fund and World Bank
• July 1, 1951
  Colombo Plan, a regional organization that embodies the concept of collective inter-governmental effort to strengthen economic and social development of member countries in the Asia-Pacific region, comes into effect
• July 1, 1960
  Italian Somalia gains independence and unites with Somali Republic
• July 1, 1962
  Burundi and Rwanda gain independence from Belgium
• July 1, 1968
  United States, Britain, Soviet Union and 58 nations sign Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy
• July 1, 1987
  The Single European Act, which establishes a single market, is passed by European countries
• July 1, 1991
  The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague
• July 1, 1996
  The Northern Territory in Australia legalises voluntary euthanasia
• July 1, 1997
  The United Kingdom hands sovereignty of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China due to lease on the territories expires
• July 1, 2000
  The Oresund Bridge, a double-track railway and dual carriageway bridge-tunnel connecting Sweden and Denmark, opens for traffic and becomes the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe
• July 1, 2006
  The Qinghai-Tibet Railway launches a trial operation, connecting China proper and Tibet for the first time
• July 1, 2047
  The People's Republic of China's obligation to run Hong Kong as a special administrative region per the Sino-British joint declaration expires