Also on this day

[Magda Hassan]

Happy 4th of July! Very quite here with everyone off partying.

• 836 – Pactum Sicardi, peace between the Principality of Benevento and the Duchy of Naples
  
• 993 – Saint Ulrich of Augsburg is canonized.
  
• 1054 – A supernova is observed by the Chinese, the Arabs and possibly Amerindians near the star Tauri. For several months it remains bright enough to be seen during the day. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula.
  
• 1120 – Jordan II of Capua is anointed as prince after his infant nephew's death.
  
• 1187 – The Crusades: Battle of Hattin – Saladin defeats Guy of Lusignan, King of Jerusalem.
  
• 1253 – Battle of West-Capelle: John I of Avesnes defeats Guy of Dampierre.
  
• 1359 – Francesco II Ordelaffi of Forlì surrenders to the Papal commander Gil de Albornoz.
  
• 1456 – The Siege of Nándorfehérvár (Belgrade) begins. (Part of the Ottoman wars in Europe)
  
• 1534 – Christian III is elected King of Denmark and Norway in the town of Rye.
  
• 1569 – The King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Sigismund II Augustus has finally signed the document of union between Poland and Lithuania, creating new country known as Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
  
• 1634 – The city of Trois-Rivières is founded in New France, later to become the Canadian province of Quebec.
  
• 1636 – City of Providence, Rhode Island forms.
  
• 1754 – French and Indian War: George Washington surrenders Fort Necessity to French Capt. Louis Coulon de Villiers.
  
• 1774 – Orangetown Resolutions adopted in the Province of New York, one of many protests against the British Parliament's Coercive Acts
  

The United States becomes a nation

• 1776 – American Revolution: the United States Declaration of Independence is adopted by the Second Continental Congress
  
• 1778 – American Revolutionary War: Forces under George Clark capture Kaskaskia during the Illinois campaign.
  
• 1802 – At West Point, New York the United States Military Academy opens.
  
• 1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is announced to the American people.
  
• 1810 – The French occupy Amsterdam.
  
• 1817 – At Rome, New York, United States, construction on the Erie Canal begins.
  
• 1826 – John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third President of the United States respectively, both die on the fiftieth anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence, of which they were both signatories.
  
• 1827 – Slavery is abolished in New York State.
  
• 1837 – Grand Junction Railway, the world's first long-distance railway, opens between Birmingham and Liverpool.
  
• 1838 – The Iowa Territory is organized.
  
• 1840 – The Cunard Line's 700 ton wooden paddle steamer RMS Britannia departs from Liverpool bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia on the first transatlantic crossing with a scheduled end.
  
• 1845 – Near Concord, Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau embarks on a two-year experiment in simple living at Walden Pond (see Walden).
  
• 1855 – In Brooklyn, New York, the first edition of Walt Whitman's book of poems, titled Leaves of Grass, is published.
  
• 1862 – Lewis Carroll tells Alice Liddell a story that would grow into Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequels.
  
• 1863 – American Civil War: Siege of Vicksburg – Vicksburg, Mississippi surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant after 47 days of siege. 150 miles up the Mississippi River, a Confederate Army is repulsed at the Battle of Helena, Arkansas.
  
• 1865 – Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is published.
  
• 1879 – Anglo-Zulu War: the zululand capital of Ulundi is captured by British troops and burnt to the ground, thus, ending the war and forcing King Cetshwayo to flee.
  
• 1881 – In Alabama, the Tuskegee Institute opens.
  
• 1886 – The people of France offer the Statue of Liberty to the people of the United States.
  
• 1886 – The first scheduled Canadian transcontinental train arrives in Port Moody, British Columbia.
  
• 1887 – The founder of Pakistan, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, joins Sindh-Madrasa-tul-Islam, Karachi.
  
• 1892 – Western Samoa changes the International Date Line, so that year there were 367 days in this country, with two occurrences of Monday, July 4.
  
• 1894 – The short-lived Republic of Hawaii is proclaimed by Sanford B. Dole.
  
• 1910 – African-American boxer Jack Johnson knocks out white boxer Jim Jeffries in a heavyweight boxing match sparking race riots across the United States.
  
• 1913 – President Woodrow Wilson addresses American Civil War veterans at the Great Reunion of 1913.
  
• 1918 – Ottoman sultan Mehmed VI ascends to the throne.
  
• 1918 – Bolsheviks kill Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family (Julian calendar date).
  
• 1927 – First flight of the Lockheed Vega.
  
• 1934 – Leo Szilard patents the chain-reaction design for the atomic bomb.
  
• 1939 – Lou Gehrig, recently diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, tells a crowd at Yankee Stadium that he considers himself "The luckiest man on the face of the earth" as he announces his retirement from major league baseball.
  
• 1941 – Nazi Germans massacre Polish scientists and writers in the captured Polish city of Lwów.
  
• 1946 – After 381 years of near-continuous colonial rule, the Philippines attains full independence from the United States.
  
• 1947 – The "Indian Independence Bill" is presented before British House of Commons, suggesting bifurcation of British India into two sovereign countries – India and Pakistan.
  
• 1950 – The first broadcast by Radio Free Europe.
  
• 1959 – With the admission of Alaska as the 49th U.S. state earlier in the year, the 49-star flag of the United States debuts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
  
• 1960 – Due to the post-Independence Day admission of Hawaiˈi as the 50th U.S. state on August 21, 1959, the 50-star flag of the United States debuts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania almost ten and a half months later (see Flag Act).
  
• 1961 – Walt Disney is one of the two main speakers on the Independence Day in The Rebuild Hills at Skørping in Denmark
  
• 1965 – Homophile activists picket at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the first in a series of Annual Reminders of the second-class status of LGBT people in the United States.
  
• 1966 – President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Freedom of Information Act into United States law. The act goes into effect the next year.
  
• 1969 – Two teens (one male, one female) are attacked at Blue Rock Springs in California. They are the second (known) victims of the Zodiac Killer. The male survives.
  
• 1969 – The Ohio Fireworks Derecho kills 18 Ohioans and destroys over 100 boats on Lake Erie.
  
• 1976 – Israeli commandos raid Entebbe airport in Uganda, rescuing all but four of the passengers and crew of an Air France jetliner seized by Palestinian terrorists.
  
• 1982 – Iranian diplomats kidnapping (1982): four Iranian diplomats are kidnapped by Lebanese militia in Lebanon.
  
• 1987 – In France, former Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie (aka the "Butcher of Lyon") is convicted of crimes against humanity and is sentenced to life imprisonment.
  
• 1993 – Sumitomo Chemical's resin plant in Nihama explodes killing one worker and injuring three others.
  
• 1997 – NASA's Pathfinder space probe lands on the surface of Mars.
  
• 2005 – The Deep Impact collider hits the comet Tempel 1.
  
• 2006 – Space Shuttle program: STS-121 Mission – Space Shuttle Discovery launches at 18:37:55 UTC.
  
• 2006 – North Korea tests four short-range missiles, one medium-range missile, and a long-range Taepodong-2. The long-range Taepodong-2 reportedly fails in mid-air over the Sea of Japan.
  
• 2008 – Cross-strait charter direct flight between mainland China and Taiwan started.