On July 11th...

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1274 Robert Bruce, King of Scotland, was born.

1346 Charles IV of Luxembourg was elected Holy Roman Emperor.

1533 Pope Clement VII excommunicated England's King Henry VIII.

1576 Martin Frobisher sighted Greenland.

1688 King Narai of Siam died.

1754 The Albany Congress ended.

1767 John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States, was born.

1788 French Admiral Comte De Grasse died.

1798 The United States Marine Corps was established by act of Congress.

1804 Alexander Hamilton was mortally wounded in a duel with Vice-President Aaron Burr.

1838 Merchant John Wanamaker was born.

1848 London, England's Waterloo Station opened.

1857 Psychologist Alfred Binet was born.

1866 James Henry Lane, one of the first U. S. Senators from Kansas, died.

1877 Kate Edger became the first woman in the British Empire to earn a Bachelor of Arts.

1899 The Fiat car company was chartered.
1899 Author E. B. White was born.

1914 Babe Ruth made his Major League debut, as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.

1916 Germany launched its final offensive in the Battle of Verdun.

1920 East and West Prussia voted in a plebiscite to become part of Germany.
1920 Actor Yul Brynner was born.

1921 Mongolia gained independence from China.

1922 The Hollywood Bowl opened.

1924 Actress Brett Somers was born.

1931 Actor Tab Hunter was born.

1934 Fashion designer Giorgio Armani was born.

1936 The Triborough Bridge, linking Manhattan, The Bronx, and Queens, New York, opened.

1937 Composer George Gershwin died.

1944 Franklin Roosevelt announced that he would be seeking a fourth term as President.

1952 Bobby Locke won the British Open.

1953 Boxer Leon Spinks was born.

1955 Congress authorized all U. S. currency to say "In God We Trust."

1957 The Western Pacific train ferry Las Plumas entered San Francisco Bay.
1957 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that U.S. Army Specialist 3rd Class William Girard should stand trial in a Japanese court for the killing of a Japanese woman.
1957 Aga Khan III, religious leader of Ismailia Moslems, died.

1960 Ivory Coast, Dahomey, Upper Volta, and Niger declared their independence.
1960 A U.S. Air Force Douglas DC-3 carrying 18 persons crashed into Mount Pichincha while on approach to Quito, Ecuador. There were no survivors.
1960 A passenger launch on the Amazon River with 32 persons aboard overturned and sank near Belém, Brazil.
1960 Katanga, Congo's richest province, was declared independent by Moise Tshombe, its Premier.
1960 To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, was published by J. B. Lippincott.

1962 Fred Baldasare became the first to swim the English Channel under water (scuba).
1962 Thirty-five paintings, worth almost $1 million, were stolen from a London, England, art gallery.
1962 Businessman E. F. Hutton died.

1967 Kenny Rogers formed the rock group First Edition.
1967 Television animal expert Jeff Corwin was born.

1969 David Bowie released "Space Oddity."
1969 Rolling Stones released "Honky Tonk Woman."

1971 The Chilean Parliament nationalized American-owned copper mines.

1973 A Brazilian Boeing 707 crashed near Paris, France, killing 122 persons.

1974 The World Football League played its first games.

1975 Chinese archeologists discovered a 3-acre burial site with 6,000 clay statues of warriors dating as early as 221 BC.

1976 JoAnne Carter won the U. S. Women's Open Golf Championship.

1978 A tanker truck carrying about 1,500 cubic feet of propylene overturned on a bend in the road and exploded in a coastal campsite near Tarragona, Spain, killing about 200 persons.

1979 The Skylab Space Station fell out of orbit.
1979 All 61 persons aboard were killed when an Indonesian airliner crashed into Mount Sibayak in Indonesia.

1981 Neva Rockefeller became the first woman to be ordered to pay her ex-husband alimony.

1982 Italy defeated West Germany for the FIFA World Cup.

1983 Lorraine Elizabeth Downes, Miss New Zealand, was crowned Miss Universe.

1989 Actor Laurence Olivier died.

1991 A Nigeria Airways DC-8 crashed at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, killing all 261 passengers and crew aboard.

1995 Seven thousand Bosnian Muslimmen were massacred when Bosnian Serbs overran the UN "safe haven" of Srebrenica.

2006 A series of bomb attacks in Mumbai, India, killed 209 persons.

2007 Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson, widow of U. S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, died.
2007 Alfonso López Michelsen, former President of Colombia, died.

2008 Michael DeBakey, inventor of an artificial heart, died.

2010 Spain defeated the Netherlands in overtime for the FIFA World Cup.

2011 Ryu So-yeon won the U. S. Open Women's Golf Championship.

2012 A suicide bombing at a police academy in Sana'a, Yemen, killed 20 persons.
2012 A fifth moon orbiting Pluto was discovered.

2015 Mexican "drug lord" Joaquin Guzmán escaped from Altiplano, a maximum-security prison west of Mexico City.

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This page was last updated on July 10, 2018.