Ottoman wars in Europe: Siege of Belgrade: John Hunyadi, Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary, defeats Mehmet II of the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire was a major political and military entity that existed from 1299 to 1922. It was founded by Osman I and expanded to become one of the largest and most influential empires in history, spanning parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa at its height.

Origins and Expansion

Founding: Established by Osman I in 1299 in the region of Bithynia, in modern-day Turkey.
Expansion: The empire expanded rapidly under subsequent sultans, conquering vast territories including the Byzantine Empire’s capital, Constantinople, in 1453. This marked the end of the Byzantine Empire and the beginning of the Ottoman’s dominance in southeastern Europe and the Middle East.

Governance and Society

Sultanate: The empire was ruled by a series of sultans, who held absolute power over their subjects.
Millet System: This system allowed for a degree of religious and cultural autonomy within the empire, where different religious communities (millets) could govern themselves under their own laws and leaders, as long as they remained loyal to the Ottoman state.
Janissaries: An elite military corps made up of converted Christian boys, who were taken from their families through the devshirme system, trained, and converted to Islam. They became one of the most powerful military units in the empire.

Culture and Contributions

Cultural Achievements: The Ottomans made significant contributions to art, architecture, science, and literature. Notable examples include the construction of the Hagia Sophia’s minarets, Topkapi Palace, and the Blue Mosque.
Trade and Economy: The empire was a major hub for trade between the East and West, benefiting from its strategic location. This facilitated the exchange of goods, culture, and ideas across continents.

Decline and Fall

Decline: The empire began to decline in the 17th century due to a combination of military defeats, economic difficulties, and internal strife. Key losses included the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 and the failed siege of Vienna in 1683.
Reform Attempts: Various sultans attempted to modernize and reform the empire in the 19th century, known as the Tanzimat reforms, but these were only partially successful.
End of the Empire: The Ottoman Empire ultimately collapsed after World War I, where it sided with the Central Powers and faced defeat. The Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 and the subsequent Turkish War of Independence led to the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, officially marking the end of the Ottoman Empire.

Grossaktion Warsaw: The systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto begins.

Grossaktion Warsaw, also known as the Grossaktion Warschau, was a brutal and devastating operation carried out by Nazi Germany during World War II. The operation took place in the Warsaw Ghetto, which was a segregated area in the city of Warsaw, Poland, where the Nazis confined the Jewish population.

The Warsaw Ghetto was established in November 1940, and it became the largest and most densely populated Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe. At its peak, the ghetto held around 400,000 Jews, forced to live in abhorrent conditions, suffering from starvation, disease, and maltreatment.

Grossaktion Warsaw was part of the larger plan known as the “Final Solution,” which aimed to exterminate European Jews. It began in the summer of 1942, as the Nazis intensified their efforts to systematically annihilate the Jewish population in Poland.

In July 1942, the Nazis launched the first wave of deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to the extermination camp at Treblinka. Thousands of Jews were rounded up, forced to leave their homes, and crammed into freight trains under inhumane conditions. Once they arrived at Treblinka, they were immediately sent to the gas chambers and murdered.

The resistance movement inside the ghetto, particularly the Jewish Combat Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa or ZOB), organized acts of resistance against the Nazis during these deportations. They attempted to fight back and disrupt the deportation process, but they were severely outnumbered and outgunned.

Despite their limited resources and the overwhelming might of the Nazi forces, the resistance fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto put up a courageous struggle for several weeks. Their efforts delayed the operation, but ultimately the Nazis prevailed.

Grossaktion Warsaw was executed in several stages, with the final round of deportations occurring in September 1942. By that time, the vast majority of the ghetto’s population had been transported to the extermination camps and murdered. The remaining Jews were either killed on the spot, sent to forced labor camps, or managed to go into hiding.

The horrors of Grossaktion Warsaw and the fate of the Warsaw Ghetto’s inhabitants became a symbol of the Holocaust’s atrocities. It stands as a stark reminder of the genocidal policies pursued by the Nazis during World War II and serves as a testament to the strength and bravery of those who resisted despite facing insurmountable odds.

Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping is restored to power.

Martial law in Poland is officially revoked.

Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping is restored to power.

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Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping is restored to power.

On this day in 22 July 1977, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was restored to power after 10 years in exile.

“I don’t care if it’s a white cat or a black cat,” Deng Xiaoping once uttered, “it’s a good cat as long as it catches mice.” It was this sort of pragmatism that helped Deng to lead the transformation of China into the economic powerhouse it is today. Over the years he was a leader of the Communist Party of China, the People’s Liberation Army of China, and the People’s Republic of China. He was a military strategist, a revolutionary, and a statesman, and he was the great architect of the country’s modernisation, its opening up to the international community, and the transformation of traditional socialism into the socialist market economy.

Deng was effectively in charge of China in the years after his restoration to power, from 1978 to 1992, but only after a slow and arduous rise to the top. He was born into a family of Hakka Han ethnicity in Guang’an County, Sichuan Province, on 22 August 1904. His father Deng Wenming was a landowner, and his mother Deng Dan died when he was still a child.

In 1920, when he was just 16 years old, Deng Xiaoping travelled to France as part of the Mouvement Traivail-Etudes work-study abroad initiative. The night prior to his departure, his father asked him what he hoped to achieve and—rather prophetically—he responded, “To learn knowledge and truth from the West in order to save China.”

After crossing the oceans to Marseilles by boat, he studied at schools in Bayeux and Chatillon, and worked a number of jobs including as a fireman on a locomotive and a fitter in a Renault factory. The work was dangerous and poorly paid and it was there—he later explained—that Deng started to understand the disadvantages of capitalism, and to study Marxism.

In 1926 he travelled to the Soviet Union to study at Moscow Sun Yat-sen University, and it was there that he met his first wife. They returned to China and married but, tragically, she died only days after giving birth to their baby girl, who also died. Then in 1933 Deng’s second wife, Jin Weiying, abandoned him after he came under political attack for fighting for the Communist Party. However, after their subsequent victory, and the founding of the People’s Republic of China, his political career took off; so much so that Mao Zedong eventually started to perceive him as a threat.

After the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Deng was exiled to a lowly existence as an ordinary worker in the Xinjian County Tractor Factory in rural Jiangxi Province, and his family were attacked by the Red Guards; his son Deng Pufang was tortured and thrown out of fourth-floor window, which left him paraplegic.

After Mao’s death on 9 September 1976 everything changed once more, and suddenly Deng was again the de facto leader. On 22 July 1977 he was officially restored to power—appointed Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee, Vice-Chairman of the Military Commission and Chief of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army—and so he was able to start the modernisation process that he so desired.

The Acts of Union 1707 is agreed to by the commissioners from the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland that later led to the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Sarawak is given independence by Great Britain.

In Atlanta, Georgia, the Confederate general John Bell Hood leads a failed attack on Union troops under General William T. Sherman.