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Today in History, July 26th

On July 26, 1990, President Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act. Plus Truman's order desegregating the military and the Suez Crisis.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 3 min read Sources checked

Published July 26, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

July 26 is best known for 1990, when President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, the broadest civil rights law for disabled Americans up to that time. The date also saw President Harry Truman order an end to segregation in the armed forces in 1948 and Egypt seize the Suez Canal in 1956.

The big story: The Americans with Disabilities Act becomes law (1990)

For much of American history, people with disabilities were shut out of jobs, schools and buildings, often by nothing more than a flight of stairs. By the 1980s, activists were framing that exclusion as a civil rights problem, much like the one Black Americans had fought a generation earlier. In 1986, the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency, reported that existing law left big gaps. Patrisha Wright, a cofounder of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, pushed hard for a national law. In March 1990, protesters made the point unforgettable: they left their wheelchairs and crutches and hauled themselves up the 100 steps of the U.S. Capitol, an event remembered as the “Capitol Crawl.” On July 26, 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed the bill. It let workers challenge employers who discriminated against them, set access standards for public buildings, hotels and restaurants, and laid down federal rules on service animals. Bush urged the country to let a “shameful wall of exclusion” come down.

More events on July 26

Year	What happened
1775	The Second Continental Congress set up a mail system, the forerunner of the U.S. Postal Service, and made Benjamin Franklin postmaster general.
1847	Liberia declared its independence and became Africa’s first democratic republic.
1941	President Franklin D. Roosevelt froze all Japanese assets in the United States.
1945	Winston Churchill resigned as British prime minister after his Conservatives lost the general election to the Labour Party.
1948	President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981, ending racial segregation in the U.S. military.
1953	Fidel Castro led a failed attack on the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba. His later revolutionary group took its name from the date: the 26th of July Movement.
1956	Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the British- and French-controlled Suez Canal, setting off the Suez Crisis.
1956	The Italian ocean liner Andrea Doria sank off Nantucket after colliding with the ship Stockholm. Fifty-one people died.
1965	The Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, gained independence from Britain.
2004	The European Union called on the United Nations to impose economic sanctions on Sudan over the violence in Darfur.
2016	Hillary Clinton was formally nominated at the Democratic National Convention, the first woman to become a major U.S. party’s presidential nominee.

Born on July 26

1875: Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology, born in Kesswil, Switzerland.
1894: Aldous Huxley, English novelist best known for Brave New World, born in Godalming, Surrey.
1943: Mick Jagger, lead singer of the Rolling Stones, born in Dartford, Kent, England.
1945: Helen Mirren, Academy Award-winning actress, born in London.