July 8

• July 8, 810
  Pepin the Hunchback, the eldest son of Charlemagne, king of Italy, dies
• July 8, 1497
  Vasco da Gama, Portuguese explorer, begins his first voyage from Europe to India via South Africa
• July 8, 1686
  The Austrians take Buda, Hungary, from the Turks and annexed the country
• July 8, 1709
  Charles XII of Sweden flees to Ottoman Empire after Peter I of Russia defeats his army at the Battle of Poltava during Great Northern War and effectively ends the Swedish empire, making Russia major European power
• July 8, 1730
  A magnitude 8.7 earthquake in Valparaíso, Chile, kills at least 3,000 people
• July 8, 1758
  During the French and Indian War a British attack on Fort Carillon at Ticonderoga, New York, is foiled by the French when some 3,500 Frenchmen defeat the British army of 15,000, which lost 2,000 men
• July 8, 1776
  Colonel John Nixon gives first public reading of Declaration of Independence
• July 8, 1853
  An expedition led by United States Commodore Matthew Perry arrives in Japan on the steam-powered "Black Ships" and threatens the Japanese capital Edo with gunships, demanding that they agree to open trade
• July 8, 1889
  In Mississippi Jake Kilrain fights boxing champion John L. Sullivan in the last world heavyweight championship prizefight decided with bare knuckles under London Prize Ring rules in history
• July 8, 1969
  United States troops begin to withdrawal from Vietnam
• July 8, 1994
  Kim II Sung, the leader of North Korea since 1945, dies at age 82
• July 8, 1997
  NATO invites the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland to join the alliance in 1999
• July 8, 2014
  Amid growing tensions between Israel and Hamas following the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in June, Israel launches Operation Protective Edge on the Palestinian Gaza Strip starting with numerous missile strikes