20 July History
- 1402 - Tamerlane's Mongols defeat Ottoman Turks at Angora.
- 1588 - The Spanish Armada sets sail from Corunna.
- 1715 - The Riot Act goes into effect in England.
- 1864 - Confederate General John Bell Hood attacks Union forces under General William T. Sherman outside Atlanta.
- 1867 - Imperial troops in Guizhou, China, kill 20,000 Miao rebels.
- 1881 - Sioux chief Sitting Bull surrenders to the U.S. Army.
- 1917 - Alexander Kerensky becomes the premier of Russia.
- 1942 - The U.S. Army Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) begins its first training class at Fort Des Moines, Iowa.
- 1944 - Adolf Hitler is wounded in an assassination attempt by German Army officers at Rastenburg.
- 1950 - The U.S. Army's Task Force Smith is pushed back by superior North Korean forces.
- 1951 - King Abdullah of Jordan is assassinated.
- 1969 - Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin become the first men to walk on the moon.
- 1976 - The Viking spacecraft lands on Mars and begins taking soil samples.
20 July Birthdays
- 1304 - Francisco Petrarch, Italian poet and scholar.
- 1591 - Anne Hutchinson, religious liberal, one of the founders of Rhode Island.
- 1850 - John Graves Shedd, president of Marshall Field and Company.
- 1919 - Edmund Hillary, New Zealand explorer.
- 1933 - Cormac McCarthy, novelist (All the Pretty Horses).
- 1939 - Judy Chicago, artist.