TODAY IN HISTORY
On July 11, 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr mortally wounded former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton during a pistol duel in Weehawken, New Jersey. (Hamilton died the next day.)
In 1859, Big Ben, the great bell inside the famous London clock tower, chimed for the first time.
In 1914, Babe Ruth made his Major League baseball debut, pitching the Boston Red Sox to a 4-3 victory over Cleveland.
In 1915, the Chicago Sunday Tribune ran an article titled, “Blues Is Jazz and Jazz Is Blues,” believed to be one of the earliest uses of the word “jazz” as a musical term by a newspaper.
In 1937, American composer and pianist George Gershwin died; he was 38.
In 1952, the Republican National Convention, meeting in Chicago, nominated Dwight D. Eisenhower for president and Richard M. Nixon for vice president.
In 1955, the U.S. Air Force Academy swore in its first class of cadets at its temporary quarters at Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado.
In 1960, the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee was first published by J.B. Lippincott and Co.
In 1972, the World Chess Championship opened as grandmasters Bobby Fischer of the United States and defending champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union began play in Reykjavik, Iceland. (Fischer won after 21 games.)
In 1979, the abandoned U.S. space station Skylab made a spectacular return to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere and showering debris over the Indian Ocean and Australia.
In 1995, the U.N.-designated “safe haven” of Srebrenica in BosniaHerzegovina fell to Bosnian Serb forces, who then carried out the killings of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys. Also: The United States normalized relations with Vietnam.
In 2017, emails released by Donald Trump Jr. revealed that he’d been told before meeting with a Russian attorney during the presidential campaign that the Russian government had information that could “incriminate” Hillary Clinton. Also: MSNBC “Morning Joe” host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough announced that he was leaving the Republican party, partly because of its loyalty to President Donald Trump.