What happened on July 4
A date most Americans can place instantly, which makes it a useful yardstick: everything below happened on the same square of the calendar.
17 things that happened
- 1776the adoption of the US Declaration of IndependenceSource
- 2012the discovery of the Higgs bosonSource
- 1976the Entebbe hostage rescueSource
- 1939Lou Gehrig's 'luckiest man on the face of the earth' speechSource
- 1862the day Lewis Carroll first told the tale of Alice in WonderlandSource
- 1054the supernova that created the Crab NebulaSource
- 1943the start of the Battle of KurskSource
- 1951the invention of the junction transistorSource
- 2005the Deep Impact probe striking a cometSource
- 1997the Mars Pathfinder landingSource
- 1845Thoreau moving to Walden PondSource
- 1961the near-meltdown of Soviet submarine K-19Source
- 1892the day Samoa lived July 4th twiceSource
- 1910Jack Johnson's title defense and the riots that followedSource
- 1855the publication of Whitman's Leaves of GrassSource
- 1837the opening of the world's first long-distance railwaySource
- 1898the sinking of the SS La BourgogneSource
Born on July 4
- 1995Post Malone — chart-topping rapper singerSource
- 1872Calvin Coolidge — 30th US presidentSource
- 1804Nathaniel Hawthorne — Scarlet Letter authorSource
- 1927Neil Simon — Broadway playwrightSource
- 1938Bill Withers — Lean on Me singerSource
- 1807Giuseppe Garibaldi — Italian unification heroSource
- 1930George Steinbrenner — Yankees ownerSource
- 1883Rube Goldberg — Rube Goldberg machine cartoonistSource