461 Majorian (died), Roman emperor (born 420)
936 Coronation of King Otto I of Germany.
1106 Henry IV (died), Holy Roman Emperor (born 1050)
1574 Robert Dudley (born), English explorer and cartographer (died 1649)
1639 Martin van den Hove (died), Dutch astronomer and mathematician (born 1605)
1679 The brigantine Le Griffon, commissioned by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, is towed to the south-eastern end of the Niagara River, to become the first ship to sail the upper Great Lakes of North America.
1726 James Bowdoin (born), American politician, 2nd Governor of Massachusetts (died 1790)
1751 Wilhelmina of Prussia (born), Princess of Orange (died 1820)
1779 Carl Ritter (born), German geographer (died 1859)
1782 George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic Purple Heart.
1789 The United States Department of War is established.
1794 U.S. President George Washington invokes the Militia Acts of 1792 to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.
1834 Joseph Marie Jacquard (died), French weaver and inventor, invented the Jacquard loom (born 1752)
1858 Australian rules football was founded and the first match was played between Melbourne Football Club and Scotch Grammar. The Melbourne Football Club (the oldest remaining sporting club in the world), was also founded on this day.
1868 Ladislaus Bortkiewicz (born), Russian-German economist and statistician (died 1931)
1876 Mata Hari (born), Dutch dancer and spy (died 1917)
1884 Billie Burke (born), American actress and singer (died 1970)
1903 Louis S. B. Leakey (born), Kenyan-English archaeologist (died 1972)
1904 Ralph Bunche (born), American political scientist, academic, and diplomat, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1971)
1909 Alice Huyler Ramsey and three friends become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip, taking 59 days to travel from New York, New York to San Francisco, California.
1913 George Van Eps (born), American guitarist (died 1998)
1916 Kermit Love (born), American puppeteer, costume designer, and actor (died 2008)
1918 Gordon Zahn (born), American sociologist and author (died 2007)
1927 Carl Switzer (born), American actor and singer (died 1959)
1930 The last confirmed lynching of blacks in the Northern United States occurs in Marion, Indiana. Two men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, are killed.
1932 Maurice Rabb, Jr. (born), American ophthalmologist (died 2005)
1942 B. J. Thomas (born), American singer
1942 Garrison Keillor (born), American author and radio host
1942 Tobin Bell (born), American actor
1942 World War II: the Battle of Guadalcanal begins – United States Marines initiate the first American offensive of the war with landings on Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands.
1943 Lana Cantrell (born), Australian-American singer and lawyer
1944 IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).
1947 Thor Heyerdahl’s balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7,000 kilometers (4,300 mi) journey across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to prove that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.
1948 Charles Bryant (died), English-American actor and director (born 1879)
1955 Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to Sony, sells its first transistor radios in Japan.
1955 Vladimir Sorokin (born), Russian author and playwright
1957 Oliver Hardy (died), American actor, singer, and director (born 1892)
1958 Alberto Salazar (born), Cuban-American runner
1958 Bruce Dickinson (born), English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (Iron Maiden and Samson)
1959 Explorer program: Explorer 6 launches from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
1959 The Lincoln Memorial design on the U.S. penny goes into circulation. It replaces the “sheaves of wheat” design, and was minted until 2008.
1960 Côte d’Ivoire becomes independent from France.
1960 David Duchovny (born), American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
1960 Jacquie O’Sullivan (born), English singer-songwriter (Bananarama and Shillelagh Sisters)
1961 Maggie Wheeler (born), American actress
1962 Alison Brown (born), American banjo player, songwriter, and producer (Northern Lights)
1963 Patrick Bouvier Kennedy (born), American son of John F. Kennedy (died 1963)
1964 Vietnam War: the U.S. Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on American forces.
1965 The infamous first Reyes party between Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and motorcycle gang the Hells Angels takes place at Kesey’s estate in La Honda, California introducing psychedelics to the gang world and forever linking the hippie movement to the Hell’s Angels.
1966 Jimmy Wales (born), American businessman, co-founded Wikipedia
1970 California judge Harold Haley is taken hostage in his courtroom and killed during an effort to free George Jackson from police custody.
1974 Philippe Petit performs a high wire act between the twin towers of the World Trade Center 1,368 feet (417 m) in the air.
1974 Rosario Castellanos (died), Mexican poet and author (born 1925)
1975 Charlize Theron (born), South African-American actress and producer
1976 Viking program: Viking 2 enters orbit around Mars.
1978 U.S. President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal due to toxic waste that had been negligently disposed of.
1979 Birgit Zotz (born), Austrian anthropologist and author
1981 The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication.
1987 Lynne Cox becomes first person to swim from the United States to the Soviet Union, crossing from Little Diomede Island in Alaska to Big Diomede in the Soviet Union
1998 The United States embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya kill approximately 212 people.
2003 K. D. Arulpragasam (died), Sri Lankan zoologist and academic (born 1931)
2004 Red Adair (died), American firefighter (born 1915)
2005 Peter Jennings (died), Canadian-American journalist (born 1938)
2007 Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants breaks baseball great Hank Aaron’s record by hitting his 756th home run.
2008 Andrea Pininfarina (died), Italian engineer and businessman (born 1957)
2011 Joe Yamanaka (died), Japanese singer and actor (Flower Travellin’ Band and The Wailers Band) (born 1946)
2012 Judith Crist (died), American critic and academic (born 1922)
EO Smith
Latest posts by EO Smith (see all)
- Patriotism - 4 July, 2017
- The Super Sucker Bowl - 10 February, 2017
- Alternative Facts and Science - 24 January, 2017