July 1: The first Tacoma Narrows Bridge opens for business, built with an 8-foot (2.4 m) girder and 190 feet (58 m) above the water, as the third longest suspension bridge in the world.

July 2: British-owned SS Arandora Star, carrying civilian internees and POWs of Italian and German origin from Liverpool to Canada, is torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-47 off northwest Ireland with the loss of around 865 lives.

July 3: British naval units sink or seize ships of the French fleet anchored in the Algerian ports of Oran and Mers-el-Kebir. The following day, Vichy France breaks off diplomatic relations with Britain

July 6: British submarine HMS Shark (54S) is sunk.

July 10: The Battle of Britain begins

July 11: British destroyer HMS Escort (H66) is torpedoed and sunk by an Italian submarine. - Vichy France begins with a constitutional law which only 80 members of the parliament vote against.

July 14: Winston Churchill, in a worldwide broadcast, proclaims the intention of Great Britain to fight alone against Germany whatever the outcome: "We shall seek no terms. We shall tolerate no parley. We may show mercy. We shall ask none."

July 15: U.S. politics: The Democratic Party begins its national convention in Chicago, and nominates Franklin D. Roosevelt for an unprecedented third term as president.

July 19: Allied victory at the Battle of Cape Spada HMAS Sydney (D48) and five destroyers sink the Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni. - Adolf Hitler makes a peace appeal to Britain in an address to the Reichstag. Lord Halifax, the British foreign minister, flatly rejects peace terms in a broadcast reply on July 22.

July 21: The Estonian SSR, Latvian SSR and Lithuanian SSR are proclaimed in Moscow.

July 25: General Henri Guisan addresses the officer corps of the Swiss army at Rütli resolving to resist any invasion of the country.

July 27: Bugs Bunny makes his debut in the Oscar-nominated cartoon short, A Wild Hare. (source: Wikipedia)