1209: French crusaders slay thousands in the name of God. Catholics and Cathars alike are cut down in the city of Béziers.
The Albigensian Crusade, which began in 1209, was one of the most blood-stained pages in medieval European history. At its heart was Pope Innocent III’s desire to stamp out the Cathar heresy – a form of Christianity condemned by the Catholic church – as well as the French king Philip II’s eagerness to crush the semi-detached County of Toulouse. But the victims, whose voices have largely been lost to history, were the people of the Languedoc, southern France, who found themselves facing a French royal army determined to take no prisoners.
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1812: The Duke of Wellington defeated “40,000 Frenchmen in 40 minutes” at Salamanca, Spain, during the Peninsular War.
1894: World’s first competitive motor race
The Paris–Rouen, Le Petit Journal Competition for Horseless Carriages was the world’s first city to city motoring competition. Staring in Paris and ending in Rouen, the race was organized by the newspaper Le Petit Journal.
1933: American aviator Wiley Post becomes the first person to fly solo around the Earth
Post landed on Floyd Bennett Field in New York 7 days after he departed alone from the same airfield in a Lockheed Vega aircraft known as Winnie Mae.
1934: Bank robber John Dillinger is shot to death by federal agents outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater, where he had just seen the Clark Gable movie “Manhattan Melodrama.”
1942: The Nazis begin transporting Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka concentration camp.
1946: More than a year after the end of World War II, bread was rationed in Britain. The shortage was blamed on a poor harvest and drought.
1946: A violent Jewish right-wing underground movement in Palestine, the Irgun Zvai Leumi, blew up a wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 soldiers and civilians.
1983: First solo helicopter flight around the world
Australian Dick Smith became the first person to fly a helicopter around the world solo. He started his trip in August 1982 and it took him around a year to finish his trip.
1992: Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar escaped from police custody as he faced transfer from La Catedral, a luxurious prison that he had built, to a more secure facility; he remained a fugitive until December 1993, when he was killed during a shootout with law enforcement.
1997: Diana, Princess of Wales was among 3,000 people at a Mass in Milan in memory of murdered Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace.
2003: A raid on a compound near Mosul, Iraq by the United States Army 101st Airborne Division ended with the deaths of Saddam Hussein‘s sons Uday and Qusay and Qusay’s 14-year-old son.
2005: Pa Michael Imoudu, foremost labour leader, died at aged 103.
2009: President Barack Obama tells a prime-time press conference that Cambridge, Mass., police acted “stupidly” in the arrest of prominent Black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., and that despite racial progress, Blacks and Hispanics are still singled out unfairly for arrest.
2011: Lone wolf extremist goes on a massacre in Norway
Anders Behring Breivik an anti-Islamist extremist placed a car bomb in front of the Norwegian Prime Minister’s office in Oslo. A few hours after the bomb exploded, killing 8 people and injuring about 200 others, Breivik opened fire at a youth summer camp on the island of Utøya killing 69 participants. This was the deadliest incident of violence in the Scandinavian country since the Second World War.
2014: A National Audit Office report found that the Home Office did not know if more than 175,000 people who had no right to be in the UK had left. All had been refused temporary or permanent migration but their whereabouts were unknown.
BIRTHS ON THIS DAY: July 22
Chief Anthony Enahoro (22 July 1923 – 15 December 2010)
Chief Anthony Eromosele Enahoro CON was one of Nigeria’s foremost anti-colonial and pro-democracy activists was born on 22 July 1923. He became the editor of Zik’s Comet, Kano, 1945-49, also associate editor of West African Pilot, Lagos, and editor-in-chief of Morning Star, 1950-53. His attempt to move the motion for Nigeria’s independence in 1953 was rejected by Parliament and the northern MP’s staged a walkout as a consequence of the attempt. Chief S.L. Akintola later attempted to move the second motion for Nigeria’s independence in 1957, though his motion was passed by Parliament it was not consented to by the British colonial authorities and it therefore failed. The successful moving of the motion for Nigeria’s independence did not take place until August 1958 when Chief Remi Fani-Kayode moved the motion.
Fatai Rolling Dollar (22 July 1927 – 12 June 2013)
Olayiwola Fatai Olagunju was born on 22nd July 1927 in Lagos, Fatai hailed from Ede in south-western Nigeria. He was a jùjú singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who however showed a rebellious streak at an early age by allowing himself to be drawn towards music considered a vocation unbefitting for someone from a royal family.
In 1957, he formed Fatai Rolling Dollar and his African Rhythm Band, an eight-piece ensemble that included Ebenezer Obey. The group recorded several singles for Phillips West Africa Records. Having had some hits with Phillips, the African Rhythm Band then moved to Jofabro/EMI where they recorded over one hundred and fifty singles and had many hits for the company including “Sisi Jaiye Jaiye” He died at 85.
