Today in History

Today is Wednesday, July 6, the 187th day of 2022.

There are 178 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On July 6, 1944, an estimated 168 people died in a fire that broke out during a performance in the main tent of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford, Connecticut.

On this date:

In 1483, England’s King Richard III was crowned in Westminster Abbey.

In 1777, during the American Revolution, British forces captured Fort Ticonderoga (ty-kahn-dur-OH’-gah).

In 1854, the first official meeting of the Republican Party took place in Jackson, Michigan.

In 1885, French scientist Louis Pasteur tested an antirabies vaccine on 9-year-old Joseph Meister, who had been bitten by an infected dog; the boy did not develop rabies.

In 1933, the first All-Star baseball game was played at Chicago’s Comiskey Park; the American League defeated the National League, 4-2.

In 1942, Anne Frank, her parents and sister entered a “secret annex” in an Amsterdam building where they were later joined by four other people; they hid from Nazi occupiers for two years before being discovered and arrested.

In 1945, President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order establishing the Medal of Freedom.

In 1957, Althea Gibson became the first Black tennis player to win a Wimbledon singles title as she defeated fellow American Darlene Hard 6-3, 6-2.

In 1988, 167 North Sea oil workers were killed when explosions and fires destroyed a drilling platform.

In 2015, Pope Francis received a hero’s welcome in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s biggest city, as he celebrated the first public Mass of his South American tour.

In 2016, Philando Castile, a Black elementary school cafeteria worker, was killed during a traffic stop in the

St. Paul suburb of Falcon Heights by Officer Jeronimo Yanez. (Yanez was later acquitted on a charge of second-degree manslaughter.)

In 2020, the Trump administration formally notified the United Nations of its withdrawal from the World Health Organization; President Donald Trump had criticized the WHO’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.