TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, JULY 4, 2018 On this day in history:

1054 - Chinese astronomers observe the supernova explosion which created the Crab Nebula.

1776 - Today is Independence Day in the United States, celebrating the signing of the American Declaration of Independence.

1884 - France presents the Statue of Liberty as a gift to the people of America.

1910 - Race riots broke out all over the United States after African-American Jack Johnson knocked out Jim Jeffries in a heavyweight boxing match.

1934 - Boxer Joe Louis won his first professional fight.

1946 - The Philippines achieved full independence for the first time in over four hundred years.

1982 - The Soviets performed a nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhl Semipalitinsk.

1987 - Klaus Barbie, the former Gestapo chief known as the “Butcher of Lyon,” was convicted by a French court of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison.

1991 - Prominent and highly respected heart surgeon, Victor Chang, is gunned down in Sydney

1997 - The Mars Pathfinder, an unmanned spacecraft, landed on Mars. A rover named Sojourner was deployed to gather data about the surface of the planet.

2005 - NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft took pictures as a space probe smashed into the Tempel 1 comet. The mission was aimed at learning more about comets that formed from the leftover buidling blocks of the solar system. The Deep Impact mission launched on January 12, 2005.

2009 - The Statue of Liberty’s crown reopens to the public after eight years of closure due to security concerns following the September 11 attacks.

2009 - The first of four days of bombings begins on the southern Philippine island group of Mindanao.

2009 - North Korea launched seven ballistic missiles into waters off its east coast that defied U.N. resolutions.

2012 - The discovery of particles consistent with the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider is announced at CERN.