On July 29, 1805, Alexis de Tocqueville was born. His most famous book, Democracy in America (two volumes: 1835, 1840), quickly became a classic of social and political research and analysis, and remains the most important early book about the United States of America. He is often referred to as a founder of sociology as well as a major figure in the development of classical liberalism.
July 28, 1868, is the official date for the certification of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
July 27 births include that of Samuel Smith (1752), an American who served as a captain, major, and lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army, and later as a politician in several capacities in the state of Maryland; Hilaire Belloc (1870), author of a classic analysis of modern political governance, The Servile State; and American singer and songwriter Bobbie Gentry (1944).
On July 27, 1694, the Bank of England received a royal charter, beginning a long history of central banking in England. Subsequent inflationary booms and deflationary busts are usually considered “mysterious” by people connected with the bank.
On July 26, 1533, Francisco Pizarro’s Spanish conquistadors strangled to death Atahualpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Incas, thereby ending 300 years of Inca civilization. The conquistadors were greedy and murderous, but the Inca civilization, arguably, was worse: totalitarian and radically inegalitarian. But they made great high-mountain roads. (Arguments about infrastructure promoted by Big Government continue to this very day. And it is quite possible that an earlier civilization made the roadways, which the Inca merely renovated.)
On this day in 1948, U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 desegregating the U.S. military.
On July 25, 1861, the U.S. Congress passed the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution, stating that the war with the seceded states of the Confederacy was being fought to preserve the Union, not to end slavery.
On July 24, 1487, citizens in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, went on strike against a ban on foreign beer.
On the same day of 1823’s calendar, slavery was abolished in Chile.
On this day in 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court told President Richard Nixon that he lacked constitutional authority to withhold the infamous “Nixon Tapes” from Congress.
July 24 serves as Pioneer Day in Utah and as Simón Bolívar Day in Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela.