Today in history
On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.
In 1802 the U. S. Military Academy opened at West Point, N.Y.
In 1826 the nation’s second and third presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, died.
In 1831 the fifth U.S. president, James Monroe, died in New York.
In 1845 author Henry David Thoreau began his 2-year experiment in simple living at Walden Pond near Concord, Mass.
In 1863 Union troops under Gen. Ulysses Grant defeated Confederate forces at Vicksburg, Miss., ending a 14-month siege in the Civil War.
In 1917 during a ceremony in Paris honoring the French hero of the American Revolution, U.S. Lt. Col. Charles Stanton declared, “Lafayette, we are here!”
In 1939 in a farewell speech to fans in Yankee Stadium, ailing baseball great Lou Gehrig called himself “the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”
In 1946 the Philippines became an independent republic after 48 years of U.S. sovereignty.
In 1959 America’s 49-star flag honoring Alaska statehood was officially unfurled. Exactly a year later, the 50-star flag honoring Hawaiian statehood was officially unfurled.
In 1976 Israeli commandos raiding Entebbe airport in Uganda completed their rescue of almost all of the passengers and crew of an Air France jetliner seized by pro-Palestinian hijackers.
In 1987 Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief known as the “Butcher of Lyon,” was convicted in France of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison.
In 1995 British Prime Minister John Major won re-election as Conservative Party leader.
In 1997 NASA’s Pathfinder spacecraft landed on Mars, inaugurating a new era in the search for life on the Red Planet.
In 2004 a 20-ton slab of granite, inscribed to honor “the enduring spirit of freedom,” was laid at the World Trade Center site as the cornerstone of the future Freedom Tower skyscraper.
In 2007 the Black Sea resort of Sochi was elected the host city of the 2014 Winter Olympics, taking the Winter Games to Russia for the first time.
In 2013 the Statue of Liberty reopened to the public, eight months after superstorm Sandy shut it down Oct. 29.