On This Day: Thursday July 28, 2005 This is the 209th day of the year, with 156 days remaining in 2005. Fact of the Day: bagel A bagel is a doughnut-shaped yeast-leavened roll that is characterized by a crisp, shiny crust and a dense interior. As traditionally made, the dough is shaped by hand into a ring, boiled quickly to seal the dough to ensure a compact texture, and then baked. A glaze of egg yolk or milk applied before baking produces a shiny crust. Any flavorings, seeds, or spices are added before baking. The origin of the bagel is not known, but its roots are central Europe. A legend traces it to Vienna in 1683, when King John III Sobieski of Poland successfully defended the city from a Turkish invasion. A local baker commemorated the victory of the great horseman by shaping bread like a stirrup (German Bü Holidays Feast day of Saints Nazarius and Celsus, St. Botvid, and St. Samson of Dol. Peru: Independence Day. Events 1540 - King Henry VIII's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, was executed, the same day Henry married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. 1615 - French explorer Samuel de Champlain discovered Lake Huron on his seventh voyage to the New World. 1821 - Peru declared its independence from Spain. 1858 - Fingerprints were first used as a means of identification by William Herschel, who later established a fingerprint register. 1868 - The 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, guaranteeing due process of law and African-Americans citizenship and all its privileges, went into effect. 1896 - The city of Miami, Florida, was incorporated. 1914 - Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, beginning World War I. 1932 - Federal troops forcibly dispersed the so-called"Bonus Army" of World War I veterans who had gathered in Washington, D.C., to demand money they weren't scheduled to receive until 1945. 1933 - The first singing telegram was delivered, to singer Rudy Vallee on his 32nd birthday. 1945 - A U.S. Army bomber crashed into the 79th floor of New York's Empire State Building, killing 14 people. 1976 - An earthquake measuring between 7.8 and 8.2 magnitude on the Richter scale leveled Tangshan, China, killing nearly a quarter million people; it was the worst earthquake in modern history. 1998 - Bell Atlantic Corp. and GTE Corp. announced a deal to create the second-biggest telephone company. The resulting mega-corporation was later to be named Verizon Communications. Births 1866 - Beatrix Potter, British author of children's stories. 1901 - Rudy Vallee, American singer. 1929 - Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, first lady of the U.S. (1961-1963), editor. Deaths 1655 - Cyrano de Bergerac, French dramatist and satirist. 1750 - Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer.