Once again, it should be reiterated, that this does not pretend to be a very extensive history of what happened on this day (nor is it the most original - the links can be found down below). If you know something that I am missing, by all means, shoot me an email or leave a comment, and let me know!
Today is, of course, Independence Day in the United States, honoring July 4, 1776, and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In fact, the Continental Congress had approved of independence two days earlier, although it was formally ratified on this day. Exactly fifty years afterwards, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who were instrumental during the American Revolution (Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence) died on this date. Another President who played a huge role in this nation's earliest days, James Madison, died on this date a few years later. The Louisiana Purchase was announced to the American public on this date. It was also on this day that Henry David Thoreau settled into his shack and commenced his experiment, if you will, on simple living off the land. Eventually, the work for which he is best known, "Walden", would come out of these experiences. The first electric lighting was exhibited in San Francisco. Bullfighting was first introduced, as was the first rodeo. In Paris, The United States was presented with the Statue of Liberty, which would one day be perhaps it's most iconic symbol. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act. The most intense rain that the nation had ever seen fell in Maryland- -over one inch in a minute!
Of course, newsworthy events occurred on this date outside of the United States. Samuel de Champlain shot and killed two Iroquois, an act which helped to make the two sides highly antagonistic towards one another. The city of Trois-Rivières was founded in what was then New France, and would later be known as Quebec province.The Philippines received full independence. The League of Nations imposed sanctions against Italy for military aggression. The United States began a bombing campaign against Nazi Germany on this date. Not ten years after the final collapse of the Third Reich, West Germany won the World Cup. The Beatles were attacked in the Philippines. The Plastic Yoko Band released "Give Peace a Chance". Klaus Barbie, the well-known Nazi "Butcher of Lyon", was given a life sentence in France.
Here's a more detailed look at events that transpired on this date throughout history:
• 836 - Pactum Sicardi, peace between the Principality of Benevento and the Duchy of Naples
• 993 - Saint Ulrich of Augsburg is canonized.
1054 - Brightest known super-nova (Crab Nebula) starts shining (23 days)
1120 - Jordan II of Capua is anointed as prince after his infant nephew's death.
1187 - Battle of Hittin (Tiberias): Saladin defeats Reinoud of Châtillon
1301 - Battle at Breukelen: Holland vs Lichtenberg
1359 - Francesco II Ordelaffi of Forlì surrenders to the Papal commander Gil de Albornoz.
1415 - Angelo Correr renounces his claim to the Papacy as Pope Gregory XII
1453 - 41 Jewish martyrs burned at stake at Breslau
1534 - Christian III is elected King of Denmark and Norway in the town of Rye.
⚜ Statue of Samuel de Champlain in Québec ⚜
1609 - Samuel de Champlain shot and killed two Iroquois chiefs at Ticonderoga, New York setting the tone of French-Iroquois relations for the next 150 years
1610 - Battle at Klushino: King Sigismund II beats Russian & Sweden
• 1634 - The city of Trois-Rivières is founded in New France, later to become the Canadian province of Québec.
1636 - City of Providence, Rhode Island form
1652 - Prince of Condé starts blood bath in Paris
1653 - British Barebones Parliament goes into session
1672 - States of Holland declares "Eternal Edict" void
1693 - Battle at Boussu-lez-Walcourt: French-English vs Dutch army
1708 - Swedish King Karel XII defeated Russians
1754 - George Washington gives Ft Necessity to France
1774 - Orangetown Resolutions adopted in the Province of New York, one of many protests against the British Parliament's Coercive Acts
Independence Hall in Philadelphia, PA
American Declaration of Independence
• 1776 - US congress proclaims the Declaration of Independence and independence from Britain 1776. The amended Declaration of Independence, prepared by Thomas Jefferson, was approved and signed by John Hancock, the President of the Continental Congress in America.
July 4, 1776: U.S. declares independence
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims the independence of the United States of America from Great Britain and its king. The declaration came 442 days after the first volleys of the American Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts and marked an ideological expansion of the conflict that would eventually encourage France's intervention on behalf of the Patriots.
The first major American opposition to British policy came in 1765 after Parliament passed the Stamp Act, a taxation measure to raise revenues for a standing British army in America. Under the banner of "no taxation without representation," colonists convened the Stamp Act Congress in October 1765 to vocalize their opposition to the tax. With its enactment in November, most colonists called for a boycott of British goods, and some organized attacks on the customhouses and homes of tax collectors. After months of protest in the colonies, Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766.
Most colonists continued to quietly accept British rule until Parliament's enactment of the Tea Act in 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny. In response, militant Patriots in Massachusetts organized the "Boston Tea Party," which saw British tea valued at some 18,000 pounds dumped into Boston Harbor.
Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.
With the other colonies watching intently, Massachusetts led the resistance to the British, forming a shadow revolutionary government and establishing militias to resist the increasing British military presence across the colony. In April 1775, Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, ordered British troops to march to Concord, Massachusetts, where a Patriot arsenal was known to be located. On April 19, 1775, the British regulars encountered a group of American militiamen at Lexington, and the first shots of the American Revolution were fired.
Initially, both the Americans and the British saw the conflict as a kind of civil war within the British Empire: To King George III it was a colonial rebellion, and to the Americans it was a struggle for their rights as British citizens. However, Parliament remained unwilling to negotiate with the American rebels and instead purchased German mercenaries to help the British army crush the rebellion. In response to Britain's continued opposition to reform, the Continental Congress began to pass measures abolishing British authority in the colonies.
In January 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, an influential political pamphlet that convincingly argued for American independence and sold more than 500,000 copies in a few months. In the spring of 1776, support for independence swept the colonies, the Continental Congress called for states to form their own governments, and a five-man committee was assigned to draft a declaration.
The Declaration of Independence was largely the work of Virginian Thomas Jefferson. In justifying American independence, Jefferson drew generously from the political philosophy of John Locke, an advocate of natural rights, and from the work of other English theorists. The first section features the famous lines, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The second part presents a long list of grievances that provided the rationale for rebellion.
On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to approve a Virginia motion calling for separation from Britain. The dramatic words of this resolution were added to the closing of the Declaration of Independence. Two days later, on July 4, the declaration was formally adopted by 12 colonies after minor revision. New York approved it on July 19. On August 2, the declaration was signed.
The American War for Independence would last for five more years. Yet to come were the Patriot triumphs at Saratoga, the bitter winter at Valley Forge, the intervention of the French, and the final victory at Yorktown in 1781. In 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris with Britain, the United States formally became a free and independent nation.
1779 - French fleet occupies Grenada
1789 - First US tariff act
1796 - First American Independence Day celebration is held
1802 - The U.S. Military Academy officially opened at West Point, NY.
• 1803 - The Louisiana Purchase was announced in newspapers. The property was purchased, by the U.S. from France, was for $15 million (or 3 cents an acre). The "Corps of Discovery," led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, began the exploration of the territory on May 14, 1804.
1810 - French troops occupy Amsterdam
1817 - Construction began on the Erie Canal, to connect Lake Erie and the Hudson River.
• 1819 - William Herschel makes last telescopic observation of 1819 comet
Picture of a bust of John Adams
A picture I took of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington during a visit with my son back in 2013.
• 1826 - Both former presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the 50th anniversary of Independence Day.
1827 - Slavery abolished in NY
1828 - Construction begins on B and O (Baltimore-Ohio) 1st US passenger RR
1829 - Cornerstone laid for first US mint (Chestnut & Juniper St, Phila)
1831 - "America (My Country 'Tis of Thee)" is 1st sung in Boston
Bust of James Madison
• 1831 - Former president James Monroe died.
1836 - Wisconsin Territory forms
1837 - Grand Junction Railway, the world's first long-distance railway, opens between Birmingham and Liverpool.
1838 - Huskar Colliery Mining Disaster in Silkstone England: Mining pit floods during a rainstorm drowning 26 children, leads to the 1842 commission on the employment of children and women in mines which resulted in the banning of female and child labour underground
1840 - The Cunard Line's 700 ton wooden paddle steamer RMS Britannia departs from Liverpool bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia on the first transatlantic crossing with a scheduled end.
Naturalist/Pacifist Henry David Thoreau
A life-sized statue of naturalist, writer, and social activist Henry David Thoreau in front of a replica of the house he built and lived in during his stay at Walden Woods, during which time he wrote his now classic book "Walden."
• 1845 - American writer Henry David Thoreau moved into his shack and began his two-year experiment in simple living at Walden Pond, near Concord, MA.
1845 - Texas Congress votes for annexation to US
• 1848 - In Washington, DC, the cornerstone for the Washington Monument was laid.
1855 - The first edition of "Leaves of Grass," by Walt Whitman, was published in Brooklyn, NY.
Jul 4, 1855: First edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is published
On this day, Walt Whitman's first edition of the self-published Leaves of Grass is printed, containing a dozen poems.
Whitman was born in West Hills, Long Island, and raised in Brooklyn. He left school at the age of 14 to become a journeyman printer and later worked as a teacher, journalist, editor, and carpenter to support his writing. In 1855, he self-published Leaves of Grass, which carried his picture but not his name. He revised the book many times, constantly adding and rewriting poems. The second edition, in 1856, included his "Sundown Poem," later called "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," one of his most beloved pieces. Whitman sometimes took long ferry and coach rides as an excuse to talk with people, and was also fond of long walks and cultural events in Manhattan.
In 1862, Whitman's brother was wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg, and Whitman went to care for him. He spent the rest of the war comforting both Union and Confederate soldiers. After the war, Whitman worked for several government departments until 1873, when he suffered a stroke. He spent the rest of his life in Camden, New Jersey, and continued to issue revised editions of Leaves of Grass until shortly before his death in 1892.
1859 - Austro-Sardinian War: the Battle of Magenta.
Lincoln Memorial Sculpture by Daniel French i Washington, D.C.
• 1861 - In a special session of 27th Congress Lincoln requests 400,000 troops
1861 - Skirmish at Harper's Ferry, WV
• 1862 - Lewis Carroll creates Alice in Wonderland for Alice P Liddell
1862 - Battle of Port Royal, SC (Port Royal Ferry)
1862 - R Morgan's: Tomkinsville, KY to Somerset, KY [->JUL 28]
1863 - Boise, Idaho founded (now capital of Idaho)
1863 - Failed Confederate assault on Helena Arkansas (640 casualties)
A statue in Flemington, New Jersey, honoring veterans of the American Civil War.
1863 - The Confederate town of Vicksburg, Mississippi, surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant and Union forces under his command.
Jul 4, 1863: Confederates surrender Vicksburg
The Confederacy is torn in two when General John C. Pemberton surrenders to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Vicksburg, Mississippi.
The Vicksburg campaign was one of the Union’s most successful of the war. Although Grant's first attempt to take the city failed in the winter of 1862-63, he renewed his efforts in the spring. Admiral David Porter had run his flotilla past the Vicksburg defenses in early May as Grant marched his army down the west bank of the river opposite Vicksburg, crossed back to Mississippi, and drove toward Jackson. After defeating a Confederate force near Jackson, Grant turned back to Vicksburg. On May 16, he defeated a force under John C. Pemberton at Champion Hill. Pemberton retreated back to Vicksburg, and Grant sealed the city by the end of May. In three weeks, Grant's men marched 180 miles, won five battles, and took 6,000 prisoners.
Grant made some attacks after bottling Vicksburg, but found the Confederates well entrenched. Preparing for a long siege, his army constructed 15 miles of trenches and enclosed Pemberton's force of 29,000 men inside the perimeter. It was only a matter of time before Grant, with 70,000 troops, captured Vicksburg. Attempts to rescue Pemberton and his force failed from both the east and west, and conditions for both military personnel and civilians deteriorated rapidly. Many residents moved to tunnels dug from the hillsides to escape the constant bombardments. Pemberton surrendered on July 4, and President Abraham Lincoln wrote that the Mississippi River "again goes unvexed to the sea."
The town of Vicksburg would not celebrate the Fourth of July for 81 years.
1863 - General Lee's army withdraws from Gettysburg
1863 - Skirmish at Smithburg, TN
1864 - -9] Battle at Chattahoochee River, Georgia Author of Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
1865 - First edition of "Alice in Wonderland" is published
1866 - Firecracker thrown in wood starts fire destroying half of Portland, Mainee, US
1868 - Battle at Ueno, Japan: last Tokugawa armies defeated
1873 - Aquarium opens in Woodward Gardens
1874 - Social Democratic Workmen's Party of North America formed
1875 - White Democrats kill several blacks in terrorist attacks in Vicksburg
• 1876 - First public exhibition of electric light in San Francisco
• 1876 - Batholdi visits Bedloe Island, future home of his Statue of Liberty
1879 - Africaner Union forms by Rev SJ du Toit at Cape colony
1881 - Booker T Washington established Tuskegee Institute (Alabama)
Pictures of Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, California
1882 - Telegraph Hill Observatory Pictures of Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, California opens in SF
1883 - Buffalo Bill Cody presents first wild west show, North Platte, Nebraska
1884 - Bullfighting was introduced in the U.S. in Dodge City, KS.
• 1884 - The Statue of Liberty was presented to the United States in Paris.
1886 - First scheduled transcontinental passenger train reaches Pt Moody, BC Education Pioneer Booker Taliaferro Washington
1886 - The first rodeo in America was held at Prescott, AZ.
• 1887 - The founder of Pakistan, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, joins Sindh-Madrasa-tul-Islam, Karachi.
1888 - First organized rodeo competition held, Prescott, Ariz
1889 - Washington state constitutional convention holds 1st meeting
1892 - James Keir Hardie chosen 1st socialist in British Lower house
1892 - Western Samoa changes the International Date Line, so that year there were 367 days in this country, with two occurrences of Monday, July 4.
1892 - The first double-decked street car service was inaugurated in San Diego, CA.
1894 - After seizing power, Judge Stanford B. Dole declared Hawaii a republic.
1894 - Elwood Haynes successfully tests one of 1st US autos at 6 MPH
• 1894 - Republic of Hawaii proclaimed, Sanford B Dole as president
1895 - Katherine Lee Bates publishes "America the Beautiful"
1898 - French liner "La Bourgogne" collides with bark Cromartyshire, 560 die
1898 - US flag hoisted over Wake Island (Spanish-American War)
1901 - William H. Taft became the American governor of the Philippines.
1903 - Pacific Cable (SF, Hawaii, Guam, Phil) opens, Pres TR sends message
1905 - Philadelphia A's beat Boston Red Sox 4-2 in 20 inning game
The Lion of Judah Emblem of the Ethiopian Empire • 1906 - Gr Brit, France & Italy grant Independence to Ethiopia
1907 - Tommy Burns KOs Bill Squires in 1 for heavyweight boxing title
1908 - NY Giant George "Hooks" Witse no-hits Philadelphia Phillies, 1-0 in 10 inn
1910 - Jack Johnson KOs James J Jeffries in 15 for heavyweight boxing title
1910 - Race riots broke out all over the United States after African-American Jack Johnson knocked out Jim Jeffries in a heavyweight boxing match.
1911 - 105°F (41°C) at Vernon, Vermont (state record)
1911 - 106°F (41°C) at Nashua, New Hampshire (state record)
1911 - Ty Cobb goes 0 for 4 & ends a 40 game hit streak
1911 - White Sox Ed Walsh stops Ty Cobb's 40-game hitting streak
1912 - Detroit Tiger George Mullen no-hits St Louis Browns, 7-0
1912 - Jack Johnson TKOs Jim Flynn in 9 for heavyweight boxing title
1913 - 37th Wimbledon Mens Tennis: A F Wilding beats McLoughlin (86 63 10-8)
1914 - First US motorcycle race (300 miles, Dodge City Ks)
• In 1917 on this day during the Great War (now known better as World War I), U.S. troops marched through Paris to Lafayette's tomb. When they reached it, American officer Colonel Charles Stanton famously declared "Lafayette, we are here!"
Jul 4, 1917: U.S. troops march through Paris to Lafayette's tomb
On July 4, 1917, the day on which the United States celebrates its independence, U.S. troops make their first public display of World War I, marching through the streets of Paris to the grave of the Marquis de Lafayette, a French aristocrat and hero of the American Revolutionary War.
Though the first large numbers of U.S. troops arrived in St. Nazaire, France, on June 26, 1916, almost three months after the formal U.S. declaration of war in early April, they were by no means to have an immediate effect on the battlefields of World War I. First, the American troops, many of them new recruits or conscripts, needed to be trained and organized into efficient battalions. They also needed to be reinforced by more of their number before they could have the strength to face Germany on the Western Front.
The U.S. commander, General John J. Pershing, dedicated himself to the establishment of training facilities and supply operations–even so, he could only promise a significant American contribution to the fighting beginning some 10 or 12 months from that time, or the summer of 1918. As a result, though the U.S. entrance into the war gave a significant psychological–and financial–boost to the exhausted Allies, on the battlefields of France the Allied soldiers were still waiting, in vain, for the hordes of arriving Americans to relieve them.
On July 4, 1917, immense public enthusiasm greeted the first public display of American troops: a symbolic march through Paris, ending at the grave of Lafayette, who had commanded revolutionary troops against the British empire and who, by his own request, had been buried in soil brought from America. To the cheers of Parisian onlookers in front of the tomb, the American officer Colonel Charles Stanton famously declared "Lafayette, we are here!"
1918 - Altar dedicated at full-scale replica of Stonehenge at Maryhill, Wa
1918 - Ottoman sultan Mehmed VI ascends to the throne.
1919 - ADGB (Allgemeine Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund) party forms
1925 - 44 die when Dreyfus Hotel in Boston collapses
1925 - 45th Wimbledon Mens Tennis: Rene Lacoste beats J Borotra (63 63 46 86)
1925 - A's Lefty Grove beats Yanks Herb Pennock 1-0 in 15 innings
1926 - Baronie soccer team forms in Breda Neth 1926 - NSDAP-party forms in Weimar
1927 - Ir Sukarno forms PNI (Perserikatan Nasional Indonesia) in Batavia
1927 - First flight of the Lockheed Vega.
1929 - AM radio station WOWO, Indiana's transmitter burns down
1930 - 43rd Wimbledon Womens Tennis: Helen Moody beats Elizabeth Ryan (62 62)
1931 - First fireworks are held at Cleveland Stadium
1931 - First trailside museum opens in Cleveland Metroparks
1932 - Bradman scores 260, a North American record, v Western Ontario
1933 - Work begins on Oakland Bay Bridge
1934 - Jordanians revolt in Amsterdam after reduction in employment
1934 - Leo Szilard patents the chain-reaction design for the atomic bomb.
1934 - Boxer Joe Louis won his first professional fight.
1934 - At Mount Rushmore, George Washington's face was dedicated.
1936 - 49th Wimbledon Womens Tennis: Hull Jacobs beats H Sperling (62 46 75)
• 1936 - League of Nations starts sanctions against Italy
1938 - First game at Shribe Park, Phila; Braves beat Phillies 10-5
1938 - France-Turkish friendship treaty
• 1940 - British destroys French battle fleet at Oran, Algeria, 1267 die
1940 - German occupiers forbid anti-Nazi speeches
1941 - Latvia partisans shoot 416 Jews dead
1941 - Politburo of Yugoslav communist party reorganizes Pathologist and Nobel Laureate Howard Florey
1941 - Howard Florey and Norman Heatley meet for 1st time, 11 days later they successfully recreate penicillin
• 1942 - First American bombing mission over enemy-occupied Europe (WW II)
• 1942 - US air offensive against Nazi Germany begins
• On this day in 1943 during World War II, Polish General Wladyslaw Sikorski died in a plane crash.
Jul 4, 1943: Polish general fighting for justice dies tragically
On this day in 1943, Polish General Wladyslaw Sikorski dies when his plane crashes less than a mile from its takeoff point at Gibraltar. Controversy remains over whether it was an accident or an assassination.
Born May 20, 1888, in Austrian Poland (that part of Poland co-opted by the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Sikorski served in the Austrian army. He went on to serve in the Polish Legion, attached to the Austrian army, during World War I, and fought in the Polish-Soviet War of 1920-21. He became prime minister of Poland for a brief period (1922-23).
When Germany invaded and occupied Poland in 1939, Sikorski became leader of a Polish government-in-exile in Paris. He developed a good working relationship with the Allies-until April 1943, when Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin broke off Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations after Sikorski requested that the Red Cross investigate the alleged Soviet slaughter of Polish officers in the Katyn forest of eastern Poland in 1942.
After Germany and the USSR divided up Poland in 1939, thousands of Polish military personnel were sent to prison camps by the Soviets. When Germany invaded Russia in 1941, Stalin created a pact with the Polish government-in-exile to cooperate in the battle against the Axis. Given the new relationship, the Poles requested the return of the imprisoned military men, but the Soviets claimed they had escaped and could not be found. But when Germany overran eastern Poland, the part that had previously been under Soviet control, mass graves in the Katyn forest were discovered, containing the corpses of over 4,000 Polish officers, all shot in the back. The Soviets, apparently, had massacred them. But despite the evidence, the Soviet government insisted it was the Germans who were responsible.
Once news of the massacre spread, a formal Declaration of War Crimes was signed in London on January 13, 1943. Among the signatories was General Sikorski and General Charles de Gaulle. But Sikorksi did not want to wait until after the war for the punishment of those responsible for the Katyn massacre. He wanted the International Red Cross to investigate immediately.
It is believed that Britain considered this request a threat to Allied solidarity and some believe that in order to silence Sikorski on this issue, the British went so far as to shoot down his plane. There is no solid evidence of this.
After the war, the communist Polish government officially accepted the Soviet line regarding the mass graves. It was not until 1992 that the Russian government released documents proving that the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, had been responsible for the Katyn slaughter-backed up by the old Soviet Politburo.
1944 - 1,100 US guns fire 4th of July salute at German lines in Normandy
1944 - First Japanese kamikaze attack, US fleet near Iwo Jima
1944 - Allied assault on Carpiquet airport at Caen
1944 - Gestapo arrests German Social Democrat Julius Leber
1946 - Anti Jewish riots in Kielce Poland, 42 die
1946 - The Philippines achieved full independence for the first time in over four hundred years.
1947 - 61st Wimbledon Mens Tennis: Jack Kramer beats Tom P Brown (61 63 62)
1950 - Braves Sid Gordon ties season grand slam record with 4
• 1950 - Harry Truman signs public law 600 (Puerto Ricans write own constitution)
1950 - The first broadcast by Radio Free Europe.
1952 - 66th Wimbledon Mens Tennis: Frank Sedgman beats J Drobny (46 62 63 62)
1952 - Canadain Currency, Mint and Exchange Fund Act allows gold coins of $5, $10, and $20 to be minted
1953 - 60th Wimbledon Womens Tennis: Maureen Connolly beats D Hart (86 75)
1953 - Imre Nagy succeeds Matyas Rákosi as premier of Hungary
1954 - WMSL (WYUR, now WAFF) TV channel 48 in Huntsville, AL (ABC) begins
Picture of the FIFA World Cup Trophy, which presented to the champions of the World Cup tournament
• In 1954 on this day, West Germany defeated Hungary, 3-2, in the 5th World Cup in Bern, in what was then still West Germany. This was the first ever World Cup championship for West Germany/Germany.
• On this day in 1954, Dr Sam Sheppard's wife Marilyn was murdered. He was accused of the crime.
Jul 4, 1954: A sensationalized murder trial inspires The Fugitive
Marilyn Sheppard is beaten to death inside her suburban home in Cleveland, Ohio. Her husband, Dr. Sam Sheppard, claimed to have fallen asleep in the family's living room and awakened to find a man with bushy hair fleeing the scene. The authorities, who uncovered the fact that Dr. Sheppard had been having an affair, did not believe his story and charged him with killing his pregnant wife.
Creating a national sensation, the media invaded the courtroom and printed daily stories premised on Sheppard's guilt. The jurors, who were not sequestered, found Sheppard guilty. Arguing that the circumstances of the trial had unfairly influenced the jury, Sheppard appealed to the Supreme Court and got his conviction overturned in 1966. Yet, despite the fact that Sheppard had no previous criminal record, many still believed that he was responsible for his wife's murder.
The Sheppard case brought to light the issue of bias within the court system. Jurors are now carefully screened to ensure that they have not already come to a predetermined conclusion about a case in which they are about to hear. In especially high-profile cases, jurors can be sequestered so that they are not exposed to outside media sources. However, most judges simply order jurors not to watch news reports about the case, and rely on them to honor the order.
Sheppard's case provided the loose inspiration for the hit television show The Fugitive, in which the lead character, Richard Kimble, is falsely accused of killing his wife, escapes from prison, and pursues the one-armed man he claimed to have seen fleeing the murder scene.
In 1998, DNA tests on physical evidence found at Sheppard's house revealed that there had indeed been another man at the murder scene. Sheppard's son, who had pursued the case long after his father's death in order to vindicate his reputation, sued the state for wrongful imprisonment in 2000, but lost.
1955 - The first king cobra snakes born in captivity in the U.S. hatched at the Bronx Zoo in New York City.
1956 - Independence National Historical Park forms in Philadelphia
1956 - US most intense rain fall (1.23" in 1 minute) at Unionville Maryland
1957 - Dutch 2nd Chamber accepts temporary tax increase
1957 - The U.S. Postal Service issued the 4¢ Flag stamp.
1958 - 72nd Wimbledon Mens Tennis: A Cooper beats N Fraser (36 63 64 13-11)
1959 - 66th Wimbledon Womens Tennis: Maria Fraser beats Darlene Hard (64 63)
1959 - America's new 49-star flag honoring Alaska statehood unfurled
1959 - Cayman Islands separated from Jamaica, made a crown colony
1960 - America's new 50-star flag honoring Hawaiian statehood unfurled
1961 - Walt Disney is one of the two main speakers on the Independence Day in The Rebuild Hills at Skørping in Denmark
• 1964 - Beachboy's "I Get Around" reaches #1
• 1966 - Beatles attacked in Philippines after insulting Imelda Marcos
Bust of American President Lyndon B. Johnson
• 1966 - U.S. President Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act, which went into effect the following year.
1967 - Opening ceremony of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center
1967 - Phillies Clay Dairymple ties NL record of 6 walks in doubleheader
1968 - Arthur Kopit's "Indians," premieres in London
1968 - Radio astronomy satellite Explorer 38 launched
Ran into this image of John Lennon, and just thought it was cool, as well as appropriate for the day, given that Paul McCartney was in town (Syracuse, New York, June 2022).
• 1969 - "Give Peace a Chance" by Plastic Ono Band is released in UK
1969 - 140,000 attend Atlanta Pop Festival featuring Led Zep & Janis Joplin
1969 - 76th Wimbledon Womens Tennis: Ann Jones beats Billie J King (36 63 62)
1969 - Italian Rumor government resigns
1969 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
1969 - The Ohio Fireworks Derecho kills 18 Ohioans and destroys over 100 boats on Lake Erie.
1970 - 100 injured in race rioting in Asbury Park NJ
1970 - 84th Wimbledon Mens Tennis: Newcombe beats K Rosewall (57 63 62 36 61)
1970 - Casey Kasem's "American Top 40" debuts on LA radio
1970 - Chartered Dan-Air Comet crashes into mountains north of Barcelona, Spain killing 112 vacationing Britons
1971 - France performed nuclear test at Muruora Island
1973 - Alan Ayckbourne's "Absurd Person Singular," premieres in London
1973 - CARICOM - Caribbean Community & Common Market, forms
1973 - In audience with Italian cyclists, Pope Paul VI praises athletes who "offer the magnificent show of a healthy, strong, generous youth"
1974 - Mike Marshall goes 9-0 with 3 saves in 20 appearances in 30 days
1975 - 82nd Wimbledon Womens Tennis: Billie Jean King beats Goolagong (60 61)
1975 - Ted Bundy victim Nancy Baird disappears from Layton, Utah
• 1976 - The United States celebrated its Bicentennial.
• On this day in 1976, punk band The Clash played their first show. They would eventually go on to become a legendary punk band.
Jul 4, 1976: The Clash play their first live gig
Formed as the first shots of the punk revolution were being fired, The Clash storm onto the UK scene with their debut performance on the Fourth of July, 1976, at The Black Swan in Sheffield, England, as the opening act for The Sex Pistols.
While America celebrated the bicentennial anniversary of its independence from Britain, the UK was in the midst of another revolution, this one staged on its very own shores. One eyewitness was singer/guitarist Joe Strummer, then the frontman of a popular pub-rock band called the 101ers. Before a gig at a London club called the Nashville Room in April 1976, he watched as that evening's opening act took the stage: "Five seconds into their first song, I just knew we were like yesterday's papers. I mean, we were over." The group was The Sex Pistols, and their effect on Strummer was life-altering. Within weeks, he'd accepted an invitation from guitarist Mick Jones and bassist Paul Simonon to leave the 101ers and join their as-yet-unnamed and drummer-less new band. Together, the three of them would form the core of a group their fans would call, with all sincerity, The Only Band That Matters.
The first live gig the Clash ever played had its predictable rough patches, but their enthusiasm and commitment were there from the start, as were their unique musical and visual esthetics. The Clash were instantly distinguishable from the group that inspired them by virtue of their sincere political bent. While the Sex Pistols sneered and preached anarchy, there was always a barely disguised element of hucksterism to their social agenda. The Clash, on the other hand, quickly established themselves as the zealous and decidedly un-soft advocates of leftist causes like racial justice. As U2 guitarist The Edge later wrote of the Clash, "This wasn't just entertainment. It was a life-and-death thing. They made it possible for us to take our band seriously....It was the call to wake up, get wise, get angry, get political and get noisy about it."
It took some months following their debut gig for the Clash to work out the kinks and find the drummer, Topper Headon, who would complete their definitive lineup. Even 25 years later, Joe Strummer could still quote nearly verbatim one of their early reviews: "The Clash are one of those garage bands who should be swiftly returned to the garage, with the doors locked and with the motor left running." Undiscouraged, the Clash released an acclaimed, self-titled debut album in the spring of 1977, and over the next two-and-a-half years, they released a second album, Give 'Em Enough Rope (1978), that was Rolling Stone magazine's pick for album of the year, and a third, London Calling (1979), that the same magazine chose as the greatest album of the 1980s.
1976 - Opening ceremony of the Dai Bosatsu monastery Catskill Mt NY
1976 - Raid on Entebbe-Israel rescues 229 Air France passengers
1978 - Memphis fire fighters halt 3-day strike under a court order
1979 - Algerian ex-president Ben Bella freed
1981 - 95th Wimbledon Mens Tennis: John McEnroe beats B Borg (46 76 76 64)
1982 - 4th Space Shuttle Mission-Columbia 4 lands at Edwards AFB
1982 - The Soviets performed a nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhl Semipalitinsk.
1982 - 96th Wimbledon Mens Tennis: J Connors beats J McEnroe (36 63 67 76 64)
1982 - Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado elected president of Mexico
1984 - Funeral for S Nakagawa & burial half his ashes next to N Senzaki
1985 - Tinker Bell's nightly flight begins
1987 - Discovery moves to Launch Pad 39B for STS-26 mission
1987 - Imran Khan takes 300th Test Cricket wicket, only Pakistani to do so
• 1987 - Nazi Klaus Barbie, the former Gestapo chief known as the "Butcher of Lyon," was convicted by a French court of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison.
1988 - US navy shoots down Iranian civilian jetliner over Gulf, kills 290
1989 - 14 year old actress Drew Barrymore, attempts suicide
1989 - Unmanned Russian Mig-23 crashes in Bellegem-Kooigem, Belgium (1 dies)
1990 - France performs nuclear test at Muruora Island
1990 - 2 Live Crew release "Banned in the USA" the lyrics quote Star Spangled Banner and; Gettysburg Address
1993 - Dave Winfield hits 442nd HR to move into 19th place
1993 - Pilar Fort, crowned 25th Miss Black America
1993 - Pizza Hut blimp deflates & lands safely on W 56th street in NYC
1994 - Russian manned space craft TM-18, lands
• 1994 - Rwandese Patriot Front occupies Kigali
1996 - Hot Mail, a free internet E-mail service begins
1997 - The Mars Pathfinder, an unmanned spacecraft, landed in Ares Vallis, on Mars. A rover named Sojourner was deployed to gather data about the surface of the planet.
1997 - Ferry service between Manhattan and Staten Island was made free of charge. Previously, the charge had ranged from 5 cents to 50 cents.
The Freedom Tower at New York City' World Trade Center
• 2004 - The cornerstone of the Freedom Tower was laid on the site of the World Trade Center in New York City. (This was largely a symbolic event; actual construction would not start for several weeks)
2005 - NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft took pictures as a space probe smashed into the Tempel 1 comet. The mission was aimed at learning more about comets that formed from the leftover buidling blocks of the solar system. The Deep Impact mission launched on January 12, 2005.
2005 - The Deep Impact collider hits the comet Tempel 1.
Picture of the space shuttle at Expo Park in Los Angeles, California
• 2006 - Space Shuttle program: STS-121 Mission - Space Shuttle Discovery launches at 18:37:55 UTC.
2006 - North Korea tests four short-range missiles, one medium-range missile, and a long-range Taepodong-2. The long-range Taepodong-2 reportedly fails in mid-air over the Sea of Japan/East Sea.
• 2009 - The Statue of Liberty's crown reopened to the public after 8 years, due to security reasons following the World Trade Center attacks in 2001.
2009 - North Korea launched seven ballistic missiles into waters off its east coast that defied U.N. resolutions.
2012 The European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN, announced the discovery of a new particle with properties consistent with the Higgs boson.
The following links are to web sites that were used to complete this blog entry:
http://www.historyorb.com/today/events.php
http://on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/jul04.htm
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory
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