General Robert E. Lee arrays his Confederate forces at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to destroy General George Meade’s Union army. The three-day conflagration will result in both sides counting some 23,000 casualties each, a Union victory, and a calamitous retreat back to Virginia for Lee..
A future US president, Theodore Roosevelt, leads his ‘Rough Riders’ at the Battle of San Juan Hill, helping the Fifth Army Corps win a decisive victory over Spain in Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish-American War..
The first Tour de France bicycle race begins as 60 riders start the six-stage, 1,509-mile loop from Montgeron to Paris. Nineteen days later, spectators will cheer Maurice Garin as he rides into the Paris velodrome almost three hours ahead of the second-place finisher. .
A huge offensive along the Western Front near France’s Somme River results in Britain’s heaviest single-day loss in history, with upwards of 60,000 dead or wounded. WWI’s Battle of the Somme will rage for 4 months, cause a million casualties, and see the British advance about 6 miles. .