TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is

Saturday, July 2.

Today’s highlight:

On July 2, 1937, aviator Amelia Earhart and naviga- tor Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first round-the-world flight along the equator.

On this date:

In 1566, French astrolo- ger, physician and professed prophesier Nostradamus died in Salon.

In 1776, the Continen- tal Congress passed a resolution saying that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”

In 1881, President James A. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau at the Washing- ton railroad station; Garfield died the following September. (Guiteau was hanged in June 1882.)

In 1917, rioting erupted in East St. Louis, Illinois, as white mobs attacked Black residents; nearly 50 people, mostly Blacks, are believed to have died in the violence.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law a sweeping civil rights bill passed by Congress.

In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Gregg v. Georgia, ruled 7-2 that the death penalty was not inherently cruel or unusual.

In 1979, the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin was released to the public.

In 1986, ruling in a pair of cases, the Supreme Court upheld affirmative action as a remedy for past job discrimination.

In 1990, more than 1,400 Muslim pilgrims were killed in a stampede inside a pedestrian tunnel near Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

In 1997, Academy Award-winning actor James Stewart died in Beverly Hills, California, at age 89.

In 2018, rescue divers in

Thailand found and saved 12 boys and their soccer coach, who had been trapped by flooding as they explored a cave more than a week earlier.

In 2020, a statement posted on his Twitter account revealed that former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain was being treated for the coronavirus at an Atlanta-area hospital, less than two weeks after attending President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (Cain died on July 30 of complications from the virus.) British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested in New Hampshire on charges that she had helped lure at least three girls — one as young as 14 — to be sexually abused by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein. (Maxwell would be convicted on five of six counts.)

Ten years ago: The U.S. Justice Department said British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline would pay $3 billion in fines for criminal and civil violations involving 10 drugs taken by millions of people.

Five years ago: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was photographed with his family soaking up the sun on a beach he had closed to the public for the Fourth of July weekend because of a government shutdown.

One year ago: After nearly 20 years, U.S. forces in Afghanistan vacated the biggest U.S. air base there, Bagram Airfield, as part of the final U.S. withdrawal from the country; an Afghan official said dozens of looters then stormed through the gates before Afghan forces regained control. The city of North Miami Beach ordered the evacuation of a condominium building after a review found unsafe conditions about five miles from the site of the deadly building collapse eight days earlier.