8th July
1949 – Celebrities Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, John Garfield, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson were named in an FBI report as Communist Party members.
1953 – The United States Supreme Court ruled that Washington, D.C. restaurants could not refuse to serve black patrons.
1965 - Ronald Biggs who was serving a 30-year prison sentence for his part in the Great Train Robbery escaped from Wandsworth prison.
1968 – James Earl Ray was arrested for the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr.
1984 – Homosexuality was declared legal in the Australia state of New South Wales.
1996 - Three young children and four adults were attacked by a man with a machete at an infant school in Wolverhampton, England.
2001 – Mamoru Takuma stabbed 8 school pupils to death at Ikeda Elementary School.
2003 - Conjoined Iranian twins, Ladan Bijani and Laleh Bijani (in Persian: لادن و لاله بیژنی ), who had volunteered to go ahead with a major operation to separate them, sadly died during surgery.
2008 – Tomohiro Katō drove a two-ton truck into a crowded pedestrianised area in the Akihabara shopping quarter in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. Before leaving the truck and attacking people with a knife, killing seven and injuring ten.
