Joan of Arc is handed over to Bishop Pierre Cauchon (1430), and NASA's New Horizons probe makes first flyby of Pluto (2015). Born on this day: Gerald Ford, Ingmar Bergman and Gustav Klimt. Died: Jacinto Benavente y Martínez, Maryam Mirzakhani and Philip II.
30 events, 63 births and 54 deaths on this date.
Captured by the Burgundians in May, Joan of Arc was transferred to Pierre Cauchon, bishop of Beauvais, who was backed by the English. The handover set her on the road to a trial that would decide her fate.
Clément de Fauquembergue · Public domainNASA's New Horizons probe flew past Pluto, closing out a first survey of the Solar System. The spacecraft had been on its way for years, and its visit to the dwarf planet was the final stop in that initial survey.
Maxime Brunerie fired a gun at the French president during the Bastille Day parade on the Champs-Élysées, but Chirac was unharmed. The attempt came in the middle of a national celebration, shocking a country that had rarely seen such a threat to its head of state.
Christian Lambiotte · CC BY 4.0
Goodall set up camp in what is now Tanzania's Gombe forest, where she would spend decades watching chimpanzees. Her patient observations showed that these apes use tools, form lasting bonds and wage organised conflict, traits once thought uniquely human.
Louis VIII, nicknamed The Lion, took the French throne after his father Philip II. He had earlier tried to seize the English crown in 1216, and his campaigns against the Angevin lands later won him Poitou and Saintonge.
Grandes Chroniques de France · Public domain
A man drove a 19-tonne cargo truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, killing 86 people and injuring hundreds more. He was shot dead by police, and the Islamic State claimed the attack.
Michel Abada · CC BY-SA 4.0
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Ford became the only US president never elected to the presidency or the vice presidency, taking office after Richard Nixon resigned in 1974. He had earlier spent almost twenty-five years in the House of Representatives, and was a Republican throughout.
David Hume Kennerly · Public domain
Swedish filmmaker whose intense, personal films, including The Seventh Seal and Persona, shaped European cinema. He also ran Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theatre and directed for the stage throughout his career.
Joost Evers / Anefo · CC BY-SA 3.0
Austrian painter and founding member of the Vienna Secession, remembered for The Kiss and his gold-leaf works. His frank paintings of the female body caused controversy, and his golden phase brought him lasting fame.
Josef Anton Trčka · Public domain
Benavente was a Spanish playwright and journalist whose plays made him one of the leading dramatists of the twentieth century. In 1922 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, honoured for continuing the great traditions of Spanish theatre.
Public domain
Iranian mathematician who became the first woman to win the Fields Medal, mathematics' top prize, in 2014. She worked on the geometry of curved surfaces and taught at Stanford University.
Gert-Martin Greuel · CC BY-SA 2.0 de
Philip II, also called Philip Augustus, ruled France for over four decades and ended the Angevin Empire by defeating his rivals at Bouvines in 1214. He strengthened royal power, grew the crown lands and left Paris with a great defensive wall.
Public domain
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