July 2: Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappear somewhere over the Pacific Ocean during an attempt to fly around the world.

July 2: Don Budge of the United States defeats Gottfried von Cramm of Germany in the gentlemen's singles final at Wimbledon.

July 4: 7,000 of Sir Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts marching from Kentish Town to Trafalgar Square clash with anti-fascists who try to push past the 2,383 police on hand, but order is generally maintained amid 27 arrests.

July 5: Hormel Foods Corporation begin selling the canned meat product Spam.

July 7: The Peel Commission publish a report on the situation in Mandatory Palestine, recommending an end to the British mandate and that the territory be partitioned into an Arab state and a Jewish state.

July 9: The Fox vault fire occurrs in a film storage facility in Little Ferry, New Jersey, destroying most of the silent films produced by Fox Film Corporation before 1932.

July 11: George Gershwin American composer and pianist dies of a brain tumor aged 38.

July 12: The comic strip Abbie an' Slats first appears.

July 15: Buchenwald concentration camp opens.

July 18: Hunter S. Thompson, journalist and author is born in Louisville, Kentucky

July 23: British Parliament passes the Matrimonial Causes Act, liberalizing the country's divorce laws.

July 29: Northern Ireland is struck by a wave of bombings in reaction to the one-day visit of the King and Queen of England. (source: Wikipedia)