On this day...July 12

Independence Day in the Philippines (1898) and the Russian Federation (1990), Dia dos Namorados in Brazil.

1864 - Union General Ulysses S. Grant pulled his troops out of the Battle of Cold Harbor.
1889 - The Armagh rail disaster killed 88 people near Armagh, Northern Ireland.
1942 - Anne Frank began keeping her diary during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
1964 - Anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison by the Pretoria Supreme Court.
1979 - A human-powered aircraft named Gossamer Albatross flew across the English Channel.

The Turk was a hoax that purported to be a chess-playing machine. Constructed and unveiled in 1770 by the Hungarian baron Wolfgang von Kempelen, the mechanism appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against a human opponent, as well as perform the knight's tour, a puzzle that requires the player to move a knight to occupy every square of a chessboard once and only once. Publicly promoted as an automaton and given its common name based on its appearance, the Turk was a mechanical illusion that allowed a human chess master to hide inside and operate the machine. With a skilled operator, the Turk won most of the games played. The apparatus was demonstrated around Europe and the United States of America for over 80 years until its destruction in 1854, playing and defeating many challengers including statesmen such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin. (more...)