July 15 in History

Soldier Pierre-François Bouchard unearthed a granodiorite stele embedded in Fort Julien's walls during the Napoleonic expedition, and its trilingual decree instantly unlocked the secrets of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Scholars across Europe rushed to decipher the text using the parallel Greek inscription, transforming a forgotten language into a readable history within decades. This breakthrough turned the stone into the British Museum's most-visited artifact, anchoring our modern understanding of ancient Egypt.

Richard Nixon announced his planned visit to China on July 15, 1971, shocking the world. When he arrived in Beijing in February 1972, he shook hands with Zhou Enlai at the airport, a gesture deliberately chosen because Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had refused to shake Zhou's hand at the Geneva Conference in 1954. Nixon spent a week in China, met with the ailing Mao Zedong, and signed the Shanghai Communique acknowledging that Taiwan was part of China. The visit shattered 23 years of diplomatic isolation between the two nations, realigned the Cold War by driving a wedge between Beijing and Moscow, and opened a trading relationship that would eventually reshape the global economy.

Erich Ludendorff launched the Second Battle of the Marne on July 15, 1918, throwing 52 divisions across the river in Germany's last great offensive of the war. French intelligence had captured a prisoner who revealed the attack date, allowing Allied commanders to pull their front lines back and prepare a devastating counterbarrage. American divisions fought their first major engagements at Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood during the broader campaign. The German advance stalled within three days. On July 18, French General Ferdinand Foch launched a massive counterattack that drove the Germans back across the Marne. Ludendorff called August 8 the "black day of the German Army." The war ended three months later.

Boeing's test pilot Alvin "Tex" Johnston rolled the prototype 367-80 (known as the Dash 80) off the runway at Renton Field on July 15, 1954, proving that a jet-powered commercial airliner was viable. The aircraft was Boeing's $16 million gamble on a future that airlines hadn't yet committed to. Pan Am's Juan Trippe wanted to buy Douglas DC-8s instead; Boeing responded by widening the fuselage six inches to match. The Dash 80 evolved into the Boeing 707, which entered airline service in 1958 and cut transatlantic flight times from twelve hours to seven. Johnston later barrel-rolled the prototype over a crowd at a boat race, nearly giving Boeing's president a heart attack.

The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project docked an American Apollo capsule with a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in orbit on July 17, 1975, creating the first physical link between the two space programs. Astronaut Tom Stafford and cosmonaut Alexei Leonov shook hands through a specially built docking module 140 miles above Earth. The mission had been negotiated during detente and required years of joint engineering to solve compatibility problems between the two spacecraft. Beyond the symbolic handshake, the crews conducted joint scientific experiments and tested rescue procedures that would prove essential decades later. The mission was the last flight of both the Apollo spacecraft and the Saturn IB rocket.

Crusader armies reached Jerusalem on June 7, 1099, after a three-year march from Constantinople that had already killed thousands from disease, starvation, and battle. The city's Egyptian garrison was outnumbered but defended by massive walls. On July 15, troops led by Godfrey of Bouillon breached the northern wall using siege towers. What followed was a massacre that shocked even medieval chroniclers: Muslim and Jewish inhabitants were slaughtered indiscriminately, with some accounts claiming blood ran ankle-deep in the Temple Mount. Godfrey refused the title of king, accepting instead "Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre." The Kingdom of Jerusalem he established lasted until Saladin recaptured the city in 1187.

The combined armies of Poland and Lithuania met the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald (Tannenberg) on July 15, 1410, in one of medieval Europe's largest battles. An estimated 39,000 Polish-Lithuanian troops faced 27,000 Teutonic Knights and their mercenaries across open farmland. The battle hinged on a deliberate Lithuanian feigned retreat that drew the Knights' right wing into a disorganized pursuit, exposing their flank. Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen was killed in the final melee. The victory broke the Teutonic Order's military dominance over the Baltic region permanently and cemented the Polish-Lithuanian union as a European superpower that would endure for nearly four centuries.