July 29 in History

William Tudor got the worst job in the Continental Army: prosecuting fellow soldiers while Britain still controlled Boston. Washington needed someone to handle courts-martial on July 29, 1775—desertion cases were piling up, discipline collapsing. Tudor, a Harvard-educated lawyer, became America's first Judge Advocate at $34 a month. He'd prosecute 32 cases in his first six months, including death penalty trials for men who'd fought beside him. Every army since has needed lawyers to judge its own.

The shooting stopped on July 29th when the 7th Cavalry Regiment simply moved on. Four days. Between 250 and 300 South Korean refugees—mostly women and children—lay dead under a railroad bridge at No Gun Ri, killed by American soldiers who'd been warned about North Korean infiltrators disguised as civilians. The Army denied it happened for fifty years. Clinton apologized in 2001 after AP reporters found survivors and veterans who'd kept silent for decades. Turns out the first question in any war isn't who's the enemy—it's how you tell the difference.

The Praetorian Guard broke into the palace and found two emperors arguing. Pupienus and Balbinus had ruled Rome together for 99 days, spending most of it feuding. The guards dragged both through the streets, stripped and beaten, then killed them in the camp. Their bodies were left in the road. That same afternoon, they elevated a 13-year-old boy named Gordian III to the purple. He'd reign six years—longer than most adult emperors that year. Rome had cycled through six emperors in twelve months, but teenage Gordian somehow outlasted them all.

Twenty-two thousand residents of Thessaloniki were chained together and marched to slave markets across the Caliphate—the largest single human haul from a Byzantine city. Leo of Tripoli's fleet arrived on July 29, 904, breached the walls in hours, then spent seven days systematically emptying the empire's second city. The Byzantine navy? Still assembling when Leo's ships disappeared over the horizon. Emperor Leo VI had stripped Thessaloniki's garrison for his failed war against Bulgaria months earlier. The city that survived centuries of barbarian sieges fell to pirates in a morning because someone chose conquest over defense.

King Rudolph II and Margrave Adalbert I crush dethroned Emperor Berengar I's forces at Firenzuola, ending his bid to reclaim the Italian throne. This decisive victory secures Rudolph's rule over northern Italy and solidifies the Ottonian dynasty's influence in the region for decades to come.

Emperor Basil II annihilated the Bulgarian army at the Battle of Kleidion, then ordered the blinding of 15,000 prisoners, leaving one eye to every hundredth man so they could lead the rest home. The horrific sight of his mutilated soldiers reportedly caused Tsar Samuil to suffer a fatal heart attack within months. The victory earned Basil the epithet "Bulgar-Slayer" and ended four decades of war by destroying Bulgaria's capacity to resist Byzantine annexation.

The army waiting for Olaf Haraldsson numbered around 14,000 farmers and chieftains. His own force: 3,600 men, many of them Swedish mercenaries. The exiled king had returned from Rus to reclaim Norway from Danish-backed jarls, but his own people met him at Stiklestad on July 29th. An axe strike above his left knee brought him down. Within a year, those same Norwegians who killed him began calling him a saint—easier to worship a dead king than obey a living one demanding tithes and Christian law.

Mary chose her cousin. Tall, handsome, Catholic—Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, checked every box for the 22-year-old Queen of Scots when they married at Holyrood Palace on July 29, 1565. He was also vain, violent, and alcoholic. Within two years, Darnley would be murdered in an explosion at Kirk o' Field, his strangled body found in the garden. Mary's suspected involvement in killing her own husband destroyed her claim to England's throne and eventually cost her head. Sometimes the worst decisions look perfect at the altar.

English fireships scattered the Spanish Armada from its anchorage at Calais, and Drake's fleet pounded the disorganized Spanish vessels off Gravelines in a running battle that lasted nine hours. The engagement wrecked Spain's invasion plan and forced the surviving Armada to attempt a disastrous return voyage around Scotland and Ireland. England's survival as a Protestant nation and emerging naval power was secured in a single day.

French forces under Marshal Luxembourg overran Allied positions at the Battle of Landen after a ferocious assault that left over 30,000 combined casualties on the field. William III of England narrowly escaped capture as his coalition army collapsed under French pressure. The staggering French losses made the victory hollow, and the war ground on for four more years without a decisive resolution.