On July 9th...

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1441 Painter Johannes van Eyck died.

1654 Ferdinand IV, King of the Romans, Bohemia, and Hungary died.

1686 Germany, Sweden, and Spain signed the League of Augsburg.

1706 Explorer Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville died.

1746 King Philip V of Spain died.

1755 The Battle of the Monongahela was fought.

1776 The Declaration of Independence was read to General George Washington's troops.

1789 The French National Assembly renamed itself the National Constituent Assembly.

1790 The Swedish Navy captured one-third of the Russian fleet during the Second Battle of Svenskund.

1797 Edmund Burke, British statesman, orator, and political writer, died.

1810 Napoleon Bonaparte annexed the Kingdom of Holland into the French Empire.

1815 The first natural gas well in the U. S. was discovered.

1816 Argentina declared its independence from Spain.

1819 Inventor Elias Howe was born.

1828 Painter Gilbert Charles Stuart died.

1846 The territory of the District of Columbia south of the Potomac River was returned to Virginia through an Act of Congress.

1850 U. S. President Zachary Taylor died.

1856 Scientist Amedeo Avogadro died.

1858 Anthropologist Franz Boas was born.

1872 John Blondel patented the doughnut cutter.

1877 The Bell Telephone Company was organized.
1877 The first Wimbledon tennis championship began.

1891 Lottie Dod and Wilfred Baddeley won their respective singles championships at Wimbledon.

1893 Dr. Daniel Williams performed the first successful open heart surgery without anesthesia.

1900 The Commonwealth of Australia was established by the British House of Commons.

1901 Romance novelist Barbara Cartland was born.

1904 Willie Anderson won the U. S. Golf Open.

1915 Germany surrendered South West Africa to the Union of South Africa.

1917 The British battleship HMS Vanguard exploded at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, killing 804 persons.

1918 The U. S. Congress created the Distinguished Service Medal.
1918 A train crash at Nashville, Tennessee, killed 101 persons and injured 171 others.

1923 U. S. Supreme Court Justice William R. Day died.

1926 Chiang Kai-shek was appointed National-Revolutionary Supreme Commander of China.

1932 Donald Rumsfeld, businessman and two-time U. S. Secretary of Defense, was born.
1932 King Gillette, inventor of the safety razor, died.

1933 The Frankford Yellowjackets were sold and subsequently rechristened the Philadelphia Eagles.

1937 Henry Cotton won the British Golf Open.

1938 Actor Brian Dennehy was born.
1938 U. S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo died.

1942 Actor Richard Roundtree was born.

1943 Astronaut John H. Casper was born.

1945 Novelist Dean R. Koontz was born.

1947 Football player O. J. Simpson was born.

1948 Satchel Paige debuted in the majors, pitching two scoreless innings for Cleveland.

1949 Bobby Locke won the British Golf Open.

1952 Television personality John Tesh was born.

1954 Peter Thomson won the British Golf Open.

1955 Actor Jimmy Smits was born.

1956 Dick Clark made his first appearance as host of "American Bandstand."
1956 Actor Tom Hanks was born.

1957 Argonne National Laboratory announced the synthesis of element 102, which was named Nobelium.

1960 Joseph Flores, the first native-born Governor of Guam, was inaugurated in Agaña.
1960 Kel Nagle won the British Golf Open.

1961 Whittaker Chambers, author who accused Alger Hiss of spying, died.

1962 The United States set off a 2-megaton thermonuclear explosion over Johnston Island which lit up the sky from Hawaii to New Zealand.
1962 Forty-nine persons were killed and 29 injured in the collision of a bus and freight train at Garmsar, India.

1964 A United Air Lines Viscount crashed in the Great Smoky Mountains near Newport, Tennessee, killing all 39 persons aboard.
1964 The New Orleans Cotton Exchange closed, after 93 years of existence.
1964 Singer Courtney Love was born.

1965 Peter Thomson won the British Golf Open.

1966 Jack Nicklaus won the British Golf Open.

1967 Kathy Whitworth won the LPGA Championship.

1972 British snipers killed five Catholic civilians and wounded two others in Springhill, Belfast, Ireland.
1972 Stan Smith won the men's singles championship at Wimbledon.

1974 Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, died.

1976 Actor Fred Savage was born.

1977 Tom Watson won the British Golf Open.
1977 Suffragist Alice Paul died.

1978 A fast-burning fire swept through a crowded theater in downtown Manila, Philippines, killing 16 persons and injuring 70 others.
1978 Former Iraqi Premier Abdul Razzak an-Naif was murdered in London, England.

1979 Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Jupiter.

1980 Seven people died in a stampede to see Pope John Paul II in Brazil.

1982 A Pan Am Boeing 727 crashed in Kenner, Louisiana, killing 153 persons.

1984 Yvonne Ryding, Miss Sweden, was crowned Miss Universe.

1985 Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, died.

1986 The New Zealand Parliament legalized consensual sex between men aged 16 and over.

1987 Colonel Oliver North admitted to shredding Iran-Contra evidence.

1989 Boris Becker won the men's singles championship at Wimbledon.

1992 Television journalist Eric Sevareid died.

1995 Pete Sampras won the men's singles championship at Wimbledon.

1996 Attorney Melvin Belli died.

1997 Mike Tyson was banned from boxing for biting Evander Holyfield's ear.

2000 Police fired tear gas at fans during a World Cup qualifying game in Harare, Zimbabwe, setting off a stampede that killed 12 persons.
2000 Venus Williams and Pete Sampras won their respective singles championships at Wimbledon.

2001 Goran Ivanisevic won the men's singles championship at Wimbledon.

2002 The African Union was established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
2002 Actor Rod Steiger died.

2004 Actress Isabel Sanford died.

2005 Actor Kevin Hagen died.

2006 A Sibir Airlines A310 veered off the runway while landing at Irkutsk Airport in Siberia in wet conditions, killing 122 persons.
2006 Roger Federer won the men's singles championship at Wimbledon.
2006 Keyboardist Milan Williams died.

2008 Irish politician Séamus Brennan died.

2011 South Sudan seceded from Sudan.
2011 Basketball player Don Ackerman died.

2014 Eileen Ford, co-founder of Ford Modeling Agency, died.

2016 A gunman killed five police officers in Dallas, Texas, during a march protesting fatal police shootings of blacks.
2016 Serena Williams won the women's singles championship at Wimbledon.

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This page was last updated on July 09, 2018.