Today in History: Hillary Clinton becomes first female nominee for President of the United States

The following are some of the major events to have occurred on July 26:

1941 – President Franklin D Roosevelt appointed General Douglas MacArthur as Commander of U.S Forces in the Far East.

1945 – Britain, China and the United States issued the Potsdam Declaration threatening Japan with “prompt and utter destruction” if it did not surrender unconditionally to end World War Two.

1952 – King Farouk of Egypt abdicated and was ordered to leave the country, three days after a coup led by General Neguib.

1952 – Eva Peron, the celebrated first lady of Argentina during the populist government of Juan Peron, died of cancer aged 33.

1953 - Fidel Castro leads a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks, intended to spark a revolution in Cuba.

1965 – The Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean became independent after 78 years as a British protectorate.

2002 – An Indonesian court sentenced former president Suharto’s son Tommy to a total of 15 years in jail for paying a hitman to kill a Supreme Court judge and other offences.

2005 – NASA successfully launched space shuttle Discovery, the first space shuttle flight since the fatal Columbia accident of 2003.

2007 – India confirmed that the latest outbreak of bird flu in poultry in the remote northeast was the H5N1 strain, the first case reported in the populous Asian nation in a year.

2008 – At least 16 small bombs exploded in the Indian city of Ahmedabad killing at least 45 people and wounding 110, a day after another set of blasts in the country’s IT hub.

2016 – Hillary Clinton becomes first female nominee for President of the United States.

2016 – Solar Impulse plane completes first fuel-free flight around the globe.

(Reuters)