FRIDAY, JULY 6
1776 The Declaration of Independence is announced on the front page of the Pennsylvania Evening Gazette.
1854, the Republican Party was born at a convention in Jackson, Michigan.
1907 Mexican painter Frida Kahlo was born. She died July 13, 1954 at 47
1918 Actor Sebastian Cabot (Family Affair‘s Mr. French) is born. He dies in 1977.
1923, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) was formed.
1925 talk show host and TV producer Merv Griffin was born. He died in 2007.
1927 Actress Janet Leigh (Psycho; mother of Jamie Lee Curtis; former wife of Tony Curtis) is born. She dies in 2004.
1933, baseball’s first All-Star Game was played at Chicago’s Comiskey Park.
1944, a fire and ensuing stampede at a Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus big top in Hartford, Connecticut, killed 169 people, the majority of whom were children. It was dubbed “The Day the Clowns Cried.”
1945, President Harry Truman signed an executive order establishing the Medal of Freedom to be awarded to civilians for meritorious service.
1947, Allen Funt debuted with The Candid Microphone on ABC Radio. The show later became a TV hit asCandid Camera.
1953, the game show Name That Tune debuted on NBC.
1957, New York City’s Althea Gibson became the first black tennis player to win a Wimbledon singles title.
1957 Paul McCartney meets John Lennon at the St. Peter’s Church Garden Fete in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool, where Lennon’s band the Quarrymen are performing. Soon after, Lennon invites McCartney to join the band.
1964, the Beatles’ first movie, A Hard Day’s Night, premiered.
1971, legendary jazz trumpeter Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong died in his sleep at the age of 69.
1994 The movie Forrest Gump, starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright Penn, Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson, and Sally Field, opens.
1997 The Sojourner landrover rolls off the Mars Pathfinder onto the Martian landscape to begin inspecting the Red Planet’s soil and rocks.
1998 Cowboy actor Roy Rogers dies at age 86.
2000, the German parliament offered a formal apology to Nazi-era slave and forced laborers when it passed a bill setting up a $5 billion compensation fund.
2000, Venus Williams beat her younger sister Serena 6-2, 7-6 (3) to reach the Wimbledon final. Their singles match was the first between sisters in a Grand Slam semifinal.
2001, former FBI agent Robert Hanssen plead guilty to 15 criminal counts, and agreed to give a full accounting of his spying activities for Moscow.
2002, Serena Williams triumphs over her sister Venus to win the Wimbledon Women’s singles competition.
2003 Actor Buddy Ebsen (actor, The Beverly Hillbillies, Barnaby Jones) dies at age 95.
SATURDAY, JULY 7
1846, the U.S. annexed California after the surrender of a Mexican garrison at Monterey.
1865, four people were hanged after being convicted of conspiring with John Wilkes Booth in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Among them was Mary Surratt, the owner of the boarding house where Booth planned the assassination. Surratt became the first women executed in the U.S. However, many historians believe she was innocent.
1898, the United States annexed Hawaii as a territory.
1930, construction began on the Boulder Dam, later renamed Hoover Dam.
1930 Author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick, Dr. Watson) dies at age 71.
1946, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini was canonized as the first American saint.
1948, the Cleveland Indians signed 42-year-old Negro Leagues star pitcher Satchel Paige, making him the oldest rookie to make it into the major leagues.
1954, Elvis Presley made his radio debut when Memphis, Tennessee, station WHBQ played his first recording for Sun Records, “That’s All Right.”
1967 Actress Vivien Leigh (Gone With The Wind, A Streetcar Named Desire) dies at age 53.
1973, President Nixon said he would not appear before the Senate Watergate Investigating Committee, or give it access to White House files.
1976 The Viking 2 spacecraft goes into orbit around Mars.
1978 TV commercial star Morris The Cat dies at age 17.
1981, President Ronald Reagan nominated Judge Sandra Day O’Connor to the U.S. Supreme Court. She would become the court’s first female justice.
1983, eleven-year-old Samantha Smith of Manchester, Maine, left for a visit to the Soviet Union at the personal invitation of Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov.
1987 Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North begins his public testimony in the Iran-Contra hearings on Capitol Hill. He claims that he “never carried out a single act, not one” without proper authorization.
1990, Martina Navratilova won a record-breaking ninth women’s title at Wimbledon.
1998, a jury in Santa Monica, California, convicted Mikail Markhasev of murdering Ennis Cosby, Bill Cosby’s only son, during a roadside robbery.
1999, Bill Clinton became the first president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to visit an Indian reservation as he toured the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
2000, Stock car driver Kenny Irwin was killed when his car slammed into a wall during practice at New Hampshire International Speedway; he was 30.
2005 Terrorist bombs detonate in four subway stations in London, England, killing more than 50 people and wounding over 700 during the morning rush hour. The attackers are never caught, although an organization calling itself a European branch of al-Qaeda takes responsibility.
SUNDAY, JULY 8
1776, Colonel John Nixon gave the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, four days after it was signed, to a crowd gathered at State House Square in Philadelphia, and the State House Bell was rung to gather the crowd for the reading. The square was later named Independence Square, and the bell became known as the Liberty Bell.
1856, C.E. Barnes of Lowell, Massachusetts, patented the machine gun.
1907, Florenz Ziegfeld staged his first Follies on the roof of the New York Theater in New York City.
1933 Actor Marty Feldman (Young Frankenstein‘s Igor, Silent Movie) is born. He dies in 1982.
1950, General Douglas MacArthur was named commander-in-chief of the United Nations forces in the Korean conflict.
1969, The withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam began.
1976, former president Richard Nixon was disbarred by the New York Bar Association and his license to practice law was revoked.
1984, John McEnroe defeated Jimmy Connors in straight sets, 6-1, 6-1, 6-2 to become the first American man in 46 years to capture back-to-back Wimbledon tennis titles.
1986, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation moving up and fixing the start of Daylight Saving Time to the first Sunday in April.
1992 The TV series Melrose Place, starring (at various times) Josie Bissett, Kristin Davis, Heather Locklear, Alyssa Milano, Andrew Shue, Courtney Thorne-Smith, Jack Wagner, Traci Lords, andPriscilla Presley, debuts.
1994 Actor Dick Sargent (the second Darrin on Bewitched) dies at age 64.
2000, the New York Yankees and cross-town rival New York Mets played in the first two-ballpark doubleheader since 1903. The afternoon game was played at Shea Stadium in Queens, and then both teams headed to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx to play the night game. The Yankees won both games by the same score, 4-2.
