Line steamships, collides with her escort destroyer HMS Rival while trying to avoid her other escort, the cruiser HMS Kent. June 5 – The Afrikaner Broederbond, a confidential cultural organisation, is founded in Johannesburg. June 8 – V603 Aquilae, the brightest nova observed since Kepler's of 1604, is discovered. June 10 – WWI: The Austro-Hungarian dreadnought battleship SMS Szent István is sunk by two Italian MAS motor torpedo boats off the Dalmatian coast. June 12 Grand Duke Michael of Russia is murdered, thereby becoming the first of the Romanovs to be killed by the Bolsheviks. WWI: The first airplane bombing raid by an American unit in France is carried out. June 16 – The Declaration to the Seven, a British government response to a memorandum issued anonymously by seven Syrian notables, is published. June 22 – Suspects in the Chicago Restaurant Poisonings are arrested, and more than 100 waiters are taken into custody for poisoning restaurant customers with a lethal powder called Mickey Finn. June 29 – Bronx International Exposition of Science, Arts and Industries opens in New York; Brazil is the only international exhibitor and the exposition closes at the end of the season. July July 3 – Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War: The Siberian Intervention is launched by the Allies, to extract the Czechoslovak Legion from the Russian Civil War. July 4 – Mehmed VI succeeds as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire on the death of his half-brother Mehmed V (Reşâd, who has reigned since 1909), himself reigning until the Sultanate is abolished in 1922. July 12 – The Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Kawachi blows up off Tokuyama, Yamaguchi, western Honshu, Japan, killing at least 621. July 13 – The National Czechoslovak Committee is established. July 14 – The film The Glorious Adventure is released in the United States, featuring Mammy Lou, who becomes one of the oldest people ever to star in a film, at a claimed age of 114. July 15 – WWI: Second Battle of the Marne: The battle begins near the River Marne, with a German attack. July 17 WWI: (famed for rescuing survivors of the ) is torpedoed and sunk off the east coast of Ireland, by Imperial German Navy submarine U-55; 218 of the 223 on board are rescued. Execution of the Romanov family: By order of the Bolshevik Party, and carried out by the Cheka, former emperor Nicholas II,