1731 - On this day in 1731, Capt. Juan Antonio Pérez de Almazán, the commander of San Antonio de Béxar Presidio, presided over what was probably the first election in Texas history. In March he had welcomed a group of settlers from the Canary Islands by laying out a place for their homes and by establishing a municipal government. The immigrants formed the nucleus of the villa of San Fernando de Béxar, the first regularly organized civil government in Texas. On August 1 the new city council met to elect alcaldes, and electoral politics was off and running.
1832 - James Bullock, accompanied by 300 men including Jim Bowie, arrive at Nacogdoches and lay seige to the Mexican garrison located there led by José de las Piedras. 30 Mexicans are killed, and the garrison flees south. A month before, in response to the Anahuac uprising, Piedras ordered that all citizens under his jurisdiction surrender their weapons. Bowie caught up to the fleeing Mexicans, ambushed them, and brought them back to Nacogdoches. Now that the Mexican army was driven out of East Texas, Texans were now free to assemble without fear of Mexican intervention. In response, Mexico assembled their forces in Mexico City, and launched one of the greatest military expeditions in history, moving men, horses and equipment, over a thousand miles to retake Texas for the rebellious Texians.
1839 - In Austin, the new capital of Texas, the first sale of town lots was held.
1845 - U.S. troops under General Zachary Taylor landed on St. Joseph Island to protect Texas from Mexican interference after annexation. The week before, on July 26, the U.S. flag was raised by a detachment from the main force.
1861 - The controversial John R. Baylor declared himself governor of the Confederate Territory of Arizona in what is now Mesilla, New Mexico. Baylor, born in Kentucky in 1822, had come to Texas at an early age. During the Civil War he commanded the Second Texas Mounted Rifles, who were ordered to occupy a chain of forts protecting the overland route between Fort Clark and Fort Bliss. In July 1861 Baylor seized Mesilla without opposition and pursued the federal Seventh Infantry, which had evacuated Fort Fillmore, east into the Organ Mountains. Baylor secured their surrender in the battle of Mesilla at San Augustine Pass on July 27. Though he was subsequently promoted to colonel, Baylor was succeeded in Mesilla by Henry Hopkins Sibley and removed from command in the spring of 1862 after ordering the extermination of the local Apache Indians. The victory at Mesilla was nonetheless one of the war's early and surprising Confederate successes, and Baylor's dashing actions in the summer of 1861 added to his fame as a folk hero. He died in 1894.
1923 - Niles City was annexed to Fort Worth. This took place after the Texas Legislature had passed a bill that allowed cities of more than 50,000 people to absorb neighboring towns of less than 2,000.
1952 - Houston's Gulf Freeway in finished. What remains is minor cleanup, excavation, signage, and striping. Later, The Gulf Freeway will become part of the Interstate Highway system as I-45 which extends from downtown Dallas, through Houston, and ending in downtown Galveston.
1966 - On this date in 1966, Charles J. Whitman began a killing rampage that left seventeen dead and thirty-one wounded in one of the worst mass murders in modern United States history. Whitman first killed his mother in her apartment and his wife in their residence. He then went to the tower on the University of Texas campus where he clubbed a receptionist, who later died, then killed two other people and wounded two more. Gaining the observation deck at an elevation of 231 feet he began firing on persons crossing the campus and others on nearby streets, killing ten and wounding thirty-one (one died a week later). Police returned his fire from the ground while police officers Ramiro Martinez and Houston McCoy gained the observation deck, where they shot and killed Whitman. An autopsy revealed a tumor in Whitman's head but medical authorities disagreed over its effect on his actions.
1973 - The notorious "Chicken Ranch" in La Grange was closed by DPS officers under orders from Governor Dolph Briscoe. Briscoe was pressured by a bombardment of stories by celebrity news reporter Marvin Zindler of KTRK-TV. With the help of reports from Texas Attorney General John Hill, Zindler exposed the local officials who allowed the illegal brothel to operate under their noses. DPS investigations revealed that in the last two days of operation, 484 clients visited the cat house. Finally, under Govenor Briscoe's orders, it was closed after 130 years of continuous operation, on this date in 1973.
1985 - At Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, 137 people were killed when a Delta Air Lines jumbo jet crashed while attempting to land.
