Important Events Of July – 20

2021-07-20

The International Chess Day is celebrated annually on July 20, the day the International Chess Federation (FIDE) was founded, in 1924.

The idea to celebrate this day as the international chess day was proposed by UNESCO, and it has been celebrated as such since 1966, after it was established by FIDE.
FIDE, which has 181 chess federations as its members,organizes chess events and competitions around the world on this day.
As recently as 2013, the international chess day was celebrated in 178 countries, according to FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov.
The day is celebrated by many of the 605 million regular chess players around the world.
A 2012 Yougov poll showed that “a surprisingly stable 70% of the adult population has played chess at some point during their lives”.
This number holds at approximately the same level in countries as diverse as the US, UK, Germany, Russia, India.

Apollo 11 was the first flight to send people to the moon. It was done by NASA, the American space group.
It went up to space on July 16, 1969, carrying three astronauts: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.
On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the moon, while Collins stayed in orbit around the Moon.
The flight was part of the Space Race. It finished the plan set by John F. Kennedy in 1961 to “land a man on the moon, and return him safely to the Earth”, before the 1960s ended.

Gregor Johann Mendel was born on 20 July 1822.
He was an Austrian monk and botanist.
He founded genetics by his work cross-breeding pea plants.
He discovered dominant and recessive characters (genes) from the crosses he performed on the plants in his greenhouse. What he learnt is known today as Mendelian inheritance.
His work was not appreciated at first, but was ‘rediscovered’ in 1900 by Carl Correns and Hugo de Vries.
Erich von Tschermak’s status as a third rediscoverer is now less convincing.
Mendel used the edible peas (Pisum sativum) for his crosses.
He published his work in 1866, but at the time no-one saw how significant it was. 35 years later, the papers were rediscovered and, immediately, modern genetics began.