July 30- Battle of Wembley

This one is dedicated to Paul!

On July 30, 1966 one of the most shameful and scandalous episodes in the history of world football took place.
In the afternoon the two teams of England, the host, and Germany met in the final of the Football World Cup. Although Germany was on paper the much better team, England were, because of their home advantage, the favourites.
The game fulfilled all expectations of the 100.000 spectators, England went 2-1 up, but in the last minute of regular time, Wolfgang Weber equalized for Germany.
Extra time!
And then came the 98th minute, Geoff Hurst hit the crossbar of the German goal from just inside the penalty box, the ball bounced back onto the goal-line, the Swiss referee Gottfried Dienst didn�t react at all and would have let the play carry on, if it hadn�t be for the hysterics of the English players who claimed a goal! The referee interrupted the game and went to the Soviet/Azerbaijani Tofir Bakhramov linesman for council and after a short discussion between the two officials, the referee decided for goal.
It has never been fully disclosed what motivated the linesman to convince the referee to give this goal, if it was a last remembrance of the old alliance in WW2, or if there were substantial rewards involved, but at the end of the day, it was the linesman who tipped the balance in England�s favour.
Although England scored a fourth goal in the dying seconds of the game, the third and illegal one decided the outcome of the match.
Since 1966, the increasing possibilities of modern technology have proven on numerous occasions (amongst others by a study by Oxford University) that the ball never crossed the line in the 98th minute, and that Germany was robbed of a well deserved victory.
It was England�s only ever trophy, whilst Germany went on to become the second successful, after Brazil, football nation in the world with three World Cup and three European Championship wins.


On a more serious note:

After a procession to commemorate Johan Hus on July 30 1419, an angry crowd stormed the town-hall of Prague, the capital of Bohemia (today�s CSR), and killed a number of assembled councilors .
Johan Hus (1369-1415) was a Czech church reformer who four years before that event had been burned at the stake.
Hus had been inspired by the teachings of the English theologian John Wycliffe, a vociferous critic of the Catholic Church.
Both had preached against the decline of the moral standards inside the Church, against the worldliness of papacy and clergy, against the financial exploitations of the lay men through the sale of indulgencies, and reflecting the sentiments of the people, Hus had attracted a large following in Bohemia.
In 1414 Johan Hus agreed to the attend the council of the Roman- Catholic Church in Constance, Southern Germany and the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund (1368-1437) , brother of the Bohemian King Wenceslaus (1361-1419), had guaranteed Hus� safe conduct and the right to defend his position. A few weeks after his arrival in Germany Hus was arrested, tortured for months and in June 1415 burned at the stake after a four week long show trial.
Hus� execution had caused consternation and protest in his native Bohemia, and had increased of the number of his followers dramatically. From being a religious protest in the beginning, it soon became a national movements of the Slavic Czechs against the ruling German aristocracy.
When Wenceslaus died in 1419, Sigismund , whom the Czechs quite rightly regarded as the man responsible for Hus� execution, was the �heir apparent�, but for obvious reasons not the most popular man in Bohemia.
On the procession of the 30 July the motions of the enraged people of Prague finally swapped over, the town hall was stormed, and the councilors who were sympathetic to Sigismund�s cause thrown out of the window. It was the beginning of the Hussite wars, whose history is told in an excellent article on AE�s main section.

The Hussite Wars

What else happened on this day?
My personal highlights:

1792 - France's national anthem, the Marseillaise, is sung for the first time

1935 � The first Penguin book is published in the UK , starting the paperback revolution

Full list

Wikipedia

Edited by Komnenos

Haha, yes the First Defenestration of Prague on July 30, 1419. Defenestration; how many times in your life do you think you will end up having to use that word! 

Man is today a boring day for history. A search of the sites does not produce much of particular interest. Oh well, happy birthday Henry Ford!

Originally posted by Constantine XI Haha, yes the First Defenestration of Prague on July 30, 1419. Defenestration; how many times in your life do you think you will end up having to use that word!�

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, as the first "defenestration" was so successfull, the Czechs did it again.
In 1618 they threw three Imperial Stewarts of HRE Mathias (1557-1619) out of the windows of the Prague castle, and this time the whole thing started the Thirty Years War, well kind of.

Edited by Komnenos