Moments in Time

•On July 29, 1588, off the coast of Gravelines, France, Spain’s “Invincible Armada” is defeated by an English naval force. After eight hours of furious fighting, a change in wind direction prompted the Spanish fleet to break off from the battle and retreat, its hopes of invasion crushed.

•On July 27, 1921, at the University of Toronto, Canadian scientists Frederick Banting and Charles Best successfully isolate insulin – a hormone they believe could prevent diabetes – for the first time. By 1923, insulin had become widely available, and Banting and Macleod were awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine.

•On July 26, 1945, in the 11th hour of World War II, Winston Churchill is forced to resign as British prime minister following his party’s electoral defeat by the Labour Party in the first general election held in Britain in more than a decade.

•On July 25, 1965, folk legend Bob Dylan performs for the first time with electric instruments. His fans, who were used to hearing him play folk songs on an acoustic guitar, were so disappointed that they booed him off the stage at the Newport Folk Festival.

•On July 31, 1975, Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa is reported missing in Detroit. He was last seen alive in a parking lot at the Red Fox restaurant the previous afternoon. To this day, Hoffa’s fate remains a mystery, although many believe he was murdered by organized crime figures.

•On July 28, 1990, Maximo Menendez falls into a coma and later dies after drinking a Colombian soft drink, Pony Malta, in Miami. The next day, FDA officials determined that the soft drink had been laced with a lethal dose of liquid cocaine in an apparent smuggling operation gone awry.

•On July 30, 2003, the last “classic” Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the production line at VW’s Puebla, Mexico, plant and is sent to a museum in Wolfsburg, Germany. The Beetle – with its rear-mounted, air-cooled engine – was the best-selling car in history, with more than 21 million produced.