ON JULY 11 ...
In 1533 Pope Clement VII excommunicated England’s King Henry VIII.
In 1767 John Quincy Adams, the sixth U.S. president, was born in Braintree, Mass.
In 1798 the U.S. Marine
Corps was formally re-established by a congressional act that also created the U.S. Marine Band.
In 1804 Vice President Aaron Burr mortally wounded former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton during a pistol duel in Weehawken, N.J.
In 1864 Confederate forces led by Gen. Jubal Early began an abortive invasion of Washington, turning back the next day.
In 1899 E.B. White, the essayist and author of children’s books such as “Charlotte’s Web,” was born in Mount Vernon, N.Y.
In 1914 Babe Ruth made his major league debut for the Red Sox, getting the victory in Boston’s 4-3 win over Cleveland.
In 1926 novelist and religious memoirist Frederick Buechner was born in New York.
In 1934 President Franklin Roosevelt became the first chief executive to travel through the Panama Canal.
In 1937 composer George Gershwin died in Hollywood;
he was 38.
In 1955 the U.S. Air Force Academy was dedicated at its temporary quarters, Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado.
In 1977 the Medal of Freedom was awarded posthumously to Martin Luther King Jr.
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 1980 American hostage Richard Queen, freed by Iran after eight months of captivity because of poor health, left Tehran for Switzerland.
In 1985 Nolan Ryan of the Houston Astros became the first pitcher in Major League Baseball to strike out 4,000 batters as he fanned Danny Heep of the New York Mets.
In 1989 actor Laurence Olivier died near London; he was 82.
In 1995 the U.N.-designated “safe haven” of Srebrenica fell to Bosnian Serb forces. Also in 1995 the United States normalized relations with Vietnam.
In 1998 Air Force Lt. Michael Blassie, a casualty of the Vietnam War, was laid to rest near his Missouri home, after the positive identification of his remains, which had been enshrined at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington, Va.
In 1999 a U.S. Air Force cargo jet dropped off emergency medical supplies at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Center for a physician at the center who had discovered a lump in her breast.
In 2000 a Middle East summit opened at Camp David, Md., between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Also in 2000 the African Methodist Episcopal
Church, the nation’s oldest black church, elected Rev. Vashti McKenzie of Baltimore its first female bishop. Also in 2000 Robert Runcie, the former archbishop of Canterbury, died in Hertfordshire, England; he was 78. Also in 2000 the American League defeated the National League 6-3 in the All-Star Game.
In 2001 the Democratic-led Senate voted to bar coal mining and oil and gas drilling on pristine federally protected land in the West.
In 2003 President George W. Bush put responsibility squarely on the CIA for his disputed claim that Iraq had tried to acquire nuclear material from Africa, prompting Director George Tenet to publicly accept full blame for the miscue. Also in 2003 the World Trade Organization ruled that heavy duties on steel imports imposed by the United States violated global trade rules. Also in 2003 thousands marked the anniversary of the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica in Bosnia, burying 282 newly identified victims.
In 2004 Joe Gold, the founder of the original Gold’s Gym in 1965, died in Los Angeles; he was 82.
In 2005 a top al-Qaida lieutenant and three other terror suspects escaped from a U.S. military jail in Afghanistan.
In 2007 Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady who had championed conservation and worked tenaciously for the political career of her husband, former President Lyndon Baines Johnson, died in Austin, Texas, at age 94.
In 2012 Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation banning legislative scholarships, effective Sept. 1.
In 2014 NBA superstar LeBron James, who won two championships with the Miami Heat, announced in a Sports Illustrated essay that he was returning home to Cleveland.