23 July 53

The English-Irish boy band One Direction (pictured) were formed while auditioning for the 2010 series of the British singing competition The X Factor.

Megawati Sukarnoputri was sworn in (pictured) as the first female president of Indonesia following her predecessor's impeachment.

Forty-seven people were arrested in Tulia, Texas, for dealing cocaine; 35 of them were pardoned by the governor of Texas years later.

Hale–Bopp, one of the most widely observed comets of the 20th century, was independently discovered by astronomers Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp.

Vanessa Williams, the first African-American Miss America, was forced to resign after the magazine Penthouse published nude photos of her without consent.

A helicopter crashed during the filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie in Valencia, California, killing actor Vic Morrow and two child actors.

A shootout between police and a Black power group began in Cleveland, Ohio, sparking three days of rioting.

The Holocaust: The gas chambers at Treblinka extermination camp began operation, killing 6,500 Jews who had been transported from the Warsaw Ghetto the day before.

Bulgarian poet and communist activist Nikola Vaptsarov was executed by firing squad.

Sumner Welles, U.S. Under Secretary of State, issued a declaration that the U.S. government would not recognize the Soviet Union's annexation of the Baltic states.

Wilfred Rhodes of England and Yorkshire became the only person to play in 1,000 first-class cricket matches.

The first National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party opened in a house in Shanghai.

During a visit of the French Navy to Kronstadt in Russia, the two nations reached a secret agreement on a joint response to any future war in Europe.

A fleet led by the Knights Hospitaller sank 22 of 28 ships of the Turkish Aydinid emirate.

A wildfire in East Attica kills at least 102 people. It is the deadliest wildfire in the history of Greece.

NASA announces discovery of Kepler-452b by the Kepler space telescope.

TransAsia Airways Flight 222 crashes in Xixi village near Huxi, Penghu, during approach to Penghu Airport. Forty-eight of the 58 people on board are killed and five more people on the ground are injured.

The Solar storm of 2012 was an unusually large coronal mass ejection that was emitted by the Sun which barely missed the Earth by nine days. If it hit, it would have caused up to US$2.6 trillion in damages to electrical equipment worldwide.

A high-speed train rear-ends another on a viaduct on the Yongtaiwen railway line in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, China, resulting in 40 deaths.

The English-Irish boy band One Direction were formed while auditioning for the 2010 series of the British singing competition The X Factor.

Megawati Sukarnoputri was sworn in as the first female president of Indonesia following her predecessor's impeachment.

ANA Flight 61 is hijacked in Tokyo, Japan by Yuji Nishizawa.

Space Shuttle Columbia launches on STS-93, with Eileen Collins becoming the first female space shuttle commander. The shuttle also carried and deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Digital Equipment Corporation files antitrust charges against chipmaker Intel.