1494 The Family de’ Medici are expelled from Florence.
1620 Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
1861 The first documented football match in Canada is played at University College, University of Toronto.
1887 The United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
1888 Mary Jane Kelly is murdered in London, widely believed to be the fifth and final victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper.
1906 Theodore Roosevelt is the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country. He did so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.
1907 The Cullinan Diamond is presented to King Edward VII on his birthday.
1915 Sargent Shriver (born), American politician, 21st United States Ambassador to France (died 2011)
1918 Spiro Agnew (born), American politician, 39th Vice President of the United States (died 1996)
1920 Byron De La Beckwith (born), American assassin of Medgar Evers (died 2001)
1941 Tom Fogerty (born), American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Creedence Clearwater Revival and Ruby) (died 1990)
1960 Robert McNamara is named president of Ford Motor Co., the first non-Ford to serve in that post. A month later, he resigned to join the administration of newly-elected John F. Kennedy.
1965 Several U.S. states and parts of Canada are hit by a series of blackouts lasting up to 13 hours in the Northeast Blackout of 1965.
1965 The Catholic Worker Movement member Roger Allen LaPorte, protesting against the Vietnam War, sets himself on fire in front of the United Nations building.
1967 NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft atop the first Saturn V rocket from Cape Kennedy, Florida.
1967 The first issue of Rolling Stone Magazine is published.
1970 The Supreme Court of the United States votes 6 to 3 against hearing a case to allow Massachusetts to enforce its law granting residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war.
1979 NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland detected purported massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early warning radars, the alert is cancelled.
1985 Garry Kasparov, 22, of the Soviet Union becomes the youngest World Chess Champion by beating Anatoly Karpov, also of the Soviet Union.
1989 Communist-controlled East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall allowing its citizens to travel to West Germany. This key event led to the eventual reunification of East and West Germany, and fall of communism in eastern Europe including Russia.
1994 The chemical element Darmstadtium is discovered.
1998 A US federal judge orders 37 US brokerage houses to pay 1.03 billion USD to cheated NASDAQ investors to compensate for price-fixing. This is the largest civil settlement in United States history.
1998 Capital punishment in the United Kingdom, already abolished for murder, is completely abolished for all remaining capital offences.
EO Smith
Latest posts by EO Smith (see all)
- Patriotism - 4 July, 2017
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- Alternative Facts and Science - 24 January, 2017