July 23 in History

Byzantine emperor Nikephoros I sacks Pliska, seizing Khan Krum's treasury in a brutal raid that temporarily crushes Bulgarian resistance. This victory, however, proves short-lived; Krum returns months later to ambush the Byzantine army at the Battle of Pliska Pass, where he kills Nikephoros and uses his skull as a drinking cup.

Sir Thomas Maitland seized control of Malta on July 23, 1813, instantly converting the island from a fragile British protectorate into a fully administered colony. His aggressive reforms established a centralized administration that solidified British naval dominance in the Mediterranean for decades to come.

A Portuguese nobleman who'd never set foot in India became spiritual shepherd to 400,000 Catholics scattered across Goa's coastal villages. Aires de Ornelas e Vasconcelos accepted the archbishop's miter in 1874, inheriting a diocese older than Brazil—established when Vasco da Gama first landed. He'd oversee 193 churches, most staffed by Indian-born priests Rome still wouldn't fully trust. The appointment continued Portugal's insistence on controlling Asian Catholicism even as its empire crumbled. Strange: the colony that converted millions couldn't imagine them leading their own faith.

Austria-Hungary forces Serbia to accept Austrian police involvement in an assassination investigation, then declares war after Belgrade rejects a single demand. This ultimatum triggers a chain reaction that pulls major European powers into a global conflict within weeks, ending the era of relative peace and redrawing national borders for decades.

Sumner Welles typed a declaration nobody in Tallinn, Riga, or Vilnius could read—Soviet troops already controlled their mail. July 23, 1940. The Under Secretary of State announced America wouldn't recognize Moscow's annexation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, three countries that had vanished from maps in June. The policy lasted fifty-one years. Through Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev, the U.S. still issued passports to Baltic diplomats representing governments with no territory. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, those same diplomatic offices were waiting. Sometimes refusing to look away is the only weapon available.

The Italian submarine Ascianghi got off one torpedo—just one—before the Royal Navy converged. She hit HMS Newfoundland at 9:47 AM, wounding twenty British sailors. Then came HMS Eclipse and HMS Laforey, hunting in tandem through Mediterranean waters off Bizerte. They depth-charged Ascianghi until she surfaced, crippled. Forty-six Italian submariners went down with her on January 24, 1943. Newfoundland limped to port and survived the war. The math of submarine warfare was always brutal: you might land your shot, but the destroyers hunting you rarely missed theirs.

The police raid on an unlicensed bar celebrating two Vietnam veterans' return home started at 3:45 AM with 73 arrests expected. By dawn, 10,000 people filled 12th Street. Governor George Romney deployed 8,000 National Guardsmen and President Johnson sent in paratroopers—17,000 troops total for one neighborhood. Five days later: 43 dead, 342 injured, 1,400 buildings burned. Most who died were killed by police or guardsmen, not rioters. Detroit's population dropped by half over the next decade as white residents fled and Black families followed jobs elsewhere. A welcome-home party destroyed a city.

Three men boarded El Al Flight 426 in Rome with Belgian passports and a plan nobody thought possible. July 23, 1968. The Boeing 707 carried 38 passengers and 10 crew toward Tel Aviv when the PFLP hijackers diverted it to Algiers—1,400 miles off course. Algeria held the aircraft for 40 days, released non-Israeli passengers first, then women and children. Twelve Israeli men stayed captive five weeks longer. The airline that prided itself on being untouchable wasn't. Every security protocol El Al uses today—the armed sky marshals, the reinforced cockpits, the passenger profiling—started the moment that plane landed in North Africa.

Ahmed Evans bought rifles with $10,000 from Cleveland's PRIDE program—a city-funded job initiative meant to ease racial tensions. On July 23rd, he used them against police. Three officers died in the ambush. Three militants died too. Then five days of fires and gunfire across Glenville, National Guard troops patrolling streets where Carl Stokes had just become America's first Black mayor of a major city eight months earlier. Stokes had personally approved the grant to Evans. The program was supposed to prevent exactly what it funded.