On July 2nd...

Links will open in a new window.

1698 Thomas Savery patented the first steam engine.

1714 Composer Christoph Gluck was born.

1776 The Second Continental Congress approved a resolution of independence.

1839 A group of Africans seized the Spanish schooner Amistad.

1850 Benjamin Lane patented a gas mask with a breathing apparatus.
1850 British statesman Sir Robert Peel died.

1862 The Morrill Land Grant Act was signed into law by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
1862 Physicist William Bragg was born.

1865 William Booth and his wife Catherine founded what is now the Salvation Army.

1881 President James Abram Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau.

1890 The Sherman Antitrust Act was passed.

1894 U.S. Attorney General Richard Olney issued a federal injunction which made the Pullman Strike an illegal activity.

1900 Ferdinand von Zeppelin launched the world's first rigid dirigible.

1902 "Mafia accountant" Meyer Lansky was born.

1903 Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, Prime Minister of Great Britain, was born.
1903 King Olav V of Norway was born.

1908 Thurgood Marshall, Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was born.

1915 Porfírio Díaz, two-time President of Mexico, died.

1916 Actor Ken Curtis was born.

1925 Civil rights activist Medgar Evers was born.
1925 Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of Congo, was born.

1926 The U.S. Army Air Corps was created.

1929 Imelda Marcos, wife of Philipine President Ferdinand Marcos, was born.

1931 Agricultural chemist Stephen Moulton Babcock died.

1932 Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's, was born.

1937 Aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean.
1937 Auto racer Richard Petty was born.

1940 The Lake Washington (Seattle) Floating Bridge was dedicated.

1947 Television producer Larry David was born.

1955 The "Lawrence Welk Show" premiered on ABC-TV.

1957 Wrestler Bret Hart was born.

1964 Baseball player Jose Canseco was born.

1977 Author Vladimir Nabokov died.

1979 Auto racer Sam Hornish, Jr., was born.

1986 Actress Lindsay Lohan was born.

2016 Human rights activist Elie Wiesel died.

This page was last updated on August 26, 2018.