July 1: The Common Nordic Labor Market Act comes into effect. - The United States officially begins using the international unit of the nautical mile, equal to 6,076.11549 ft. or 1,852 meters.

July 4: Food rationing in Great Britain ends with the lifting of restrictions on sale and purchase of meat, 14 years after it began early in World War II and nearly a decade after the war's end. - West Germany beats Hungary 3-2 to win the 1954 FIFA World Cup.

July 10: Peter Thomson becomes the first Australian to win the British Open Golf Championship.

July 15: The maiden flight of the Boeing 367-80 (or Dash 80), prototype of the Boeing 707 series. - Juan Fangio, the Argentine driver for German Grand Prix team Mercedes-Benz, makes a new fastest lap of the Silverstone Circuit with an average speed of 100.35 mph, the previous record being 100.16 mph.

July 21: First Indochina War: The Geneva Conference sends French forces to the south, and Vietnamese forces to the north, of a ceasefire line, and calls for elections to decide the government for all of Vietnam by July 1956. Failure to abide by the terms of the agreement leads to the establishment de facto of regimes of North Vietnam and South Vietnam, and the Vietnam War.

July 31: Italian mountaineers Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni become the first successfully to reach the summit of the Himalayan peak K2. (source: Wikipedia)