1. On July 19, 1912, the Missouri State Capitol building in Jefferson City caught fire and was severely damaged. The fire started in the House of Representatives chamber and quickly spread throughout the building. It took two years to repair the damage.

2. In 1931, scientist and Nobel laureate Ernest O. Lawrence began conducting experiments with a new type of particle accelerator at the University of California, Berkeley. The device, known as the cyclotron, would revolutionize the field of nuclear physics and lead to the development of the atomic bomb. Lawrence was born in Canton, South Dakota, but grew up in Canton, Missouri.

3. Major League Baseball player and manager Whitey Herzog was born on July 19, 1931, in New Athens, Illinois. Herzog played for the Kansas City Athletics and Baltimore Orioles, among other teams, before transitioning to coaching and management. He is best known for guiding the St. Louis Cardinals to a World Series championship in 1982.

4. On July 19, 1941, the Missouri River flooded parts of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. The floodwaters caused extensive damage to homes, businesses, and farmland, and forced thousands of people to evacuate. It was one of the worst floods in Missouri history.

5. The first steamboat to travel up the Missouri River, the Western Engineer, reached present-day Kansas City on July 19, 1819. The boat was built by Captain Henry Miller Shreve and commissioned by the federal government to navigate the river and survey potential sites for forts and military posts. The Western Engineer made several more trips up and down the Missouri River in the following years.