Historical timeline for July 23

A wildfire in East Attica kills at least 102 people. It is the deadliest wildfire in the history of Greece.

NASA announces discovery of Kepler-452b by the Kepler space telescope.

TransAsia Airways Flight 222 crashes in Xixi village near Huxi, Penghu, during approach to Penghu Airport. Forty-eight of the 58 people on board are killed and five more people on the ground are injured.

The Solar storm of 2012 was an unusually large coronal mass ejection that was emitted by the Sun which barely missed the Earth by nine days. If it hit, it would have caused up to US$2.6 trillion in damages to electrical equipment worldwide.

A high-speed train rear-ends another on a viaduct on the Yongtaiwen railway line in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, China, resulting in 40 deaths.

The English-Irish boy band One Direction were formed while auditioning for the 2010 series of the British singing competition The X Factor.

Three bombs explode in the Naama Bay area of Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, killing 88 people.

Megawati Sukarnoputri was sworn in as the first female president of Indonesia following her predecessor's impeachment.

ANA Flight 61 is hijacked in Tokyo, Japan by Yuji Nishizawa.

Space Shuttle Columbia launches on STS-93, with Eileen Collins becoming the first female space shuttle commander. The shuttle also carried and deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Digital Equipment Corporation files antitrust charges against chipmaker Intel.

Comet Hale–Bopp is discovered; it becomes visible to the naked eye on Earth nearly a year later.

China Northwest Airlines Flight 2119 crashes during takeoff from Yinchuan Xihuayuan Airport in Yinchuan, Ningxia, China, killing 55 people.

A Vatican commission, led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, establishes that limiting certain rights of homosexual people and non-married couples is not equivalent to discrimination on grounds of race or gender.

Abkhazia declares independence from Georgia.

General Ne Win, effective ruler of Burma since 1962, resigns after pro-democracy protests.

Gimli Glider: Air Canada Flight 143 runs out of fuel and makes a deadstick landing at Gimli, Manitoba.

Thirteen Sri Lanka Army soldiers are killed after a deadly ambush by the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Outside Santa Clarita, California, actor Vic Morrow and two children are killed when a helicopter crashes onto them while shooting a scene from Twilight Zone: The Movie.

Phạm Tuân becomes the first Vietnamese citizen and the first Asian in space when he flies aboard the Soyuz 37 mission as an Intercosmos Research Cosmonaut.