Category: Today

1054 – A supernova was spotted by Chinese, Arab, and possibly Amerindian observers. The celestial event occurred near the star Zeta Tauri, remaining, for several months, bright enough to be seen during the day. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula.

1776 — The Second Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence that had been submitted by committee members Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams, thus formalizing its policy of secession from the empire of the Kingdom of Great Britain.

1803 — The Louisiana Purchase was announced to the American people.

1804 – Nathaniel Hawthorne, American author of The Scarlet Letter, House of Seven Gables, The Blithesdale Romance, and other classics, was born. Hawthorne became part of the Young America literary movement spawned by Loco-Foco political activism in New England.

1826 – Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, died a few hours before John Adams, second president of the United States, on the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the United States’ Declaration of Independence.

1826 – Stephen Foster, composer of “Old Black Joe,” “Beautiful Dreamer,” and many other classic American songs, was born.

1827 – Slavery was abolished in New York State.

1831 – Samuel Francis Smith wrote “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” for Boston’s July 4th festivities, set to the tune of Great Britain’s national anthem, “God Save the King/Queen.”

2009 – The Statue of Liberty’s crown re-opened to the public after eight years of closure that resulted from security concerns following the September 11, 2001, attacks.

On July 3, 1775, George Washington took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 1952 on July 3, Puerto Rico’s Constitution was approved by the Congress of the United States.

On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress un-tabled the Lee Resolution and voted to sever ties with the Kingdom of Great Britain.

One year later, to the day, Vermont became the first American territory to abolish slavery.

On July 1, 1858, a joint reading at the Linnean Society of London of papers by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace debuted a new explanation of speciation and biological evolution.

Linnean Society records record that eminent scientists Charles Lyell and Joseph Dalton Hooker “communicated” the papers of the two breakthrough theorists:

• An extract from Darwin’s unpublished manuscript (written in 1844, part of his Essay).
• An abstract of Darwin’s 1857 letter to Asa Gray, outlining his theory.
• Wallace’s essay, “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type” (written in 1858).

Though attended by about 30 prominent intellectuals and scientists of the day, conspicuously not in attendance were either Wallace (who was in the East Indies) or Darwin (whose son Charles Waring Darwin had died two days earlier).

The event proved to be one of the more significant scientific presentations in the history of western civilization.

Charles Julius Guiteau met his death on June 30, 1882, at the end of a rope (as was commonly said at the time), three days shy of a year after shooting newly elected President James A. Garfield.

Guiteau was a member of the “Stalwart” faction of the Republican Party, devoted to the continuation of the kind of job-seeking corruption that Garfield, the reformer, opposed on principle. Despite being on the opposite team, so to speak, Guiteau was an ardent supporter of Garfield in the election campaign, and expected a diplomatic position in return. Failing to gain such a position in the new administration, Guiteau decided upon a sort of mad revenge as the apt response to Garfield’s “betrayal.”

While it took a year to finalize Guiteau’s execution, it took much less time — if itself an excruciatingly long time — for Garfield to die of the wound and the subsequent doctoring, on September 19th, 1881.

On June 29, 1914, the day after the shooting of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Austrian interrogations confirmed — to the satisfaction of Gavril Princip’s interrogators and their government, anyway — that the Serbian state was behind the assassination. Serbia denied involvement.

Thus continued the series of events that led to “The Great War,” now known as “World War I.”

On the 28th of June in 1914, 19-year-old Gavril Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and the Archduke’s wife Sophie. The Archduke had earlier missed a bomb thrown at his car, which necessitated a change in the motorcade route, which the driver forgot, which is why the car paused at the precise intersection in which Princip fired his fatal shots.

The shooting began a series of events that led to “The Great War,” now known as “World War I.”

In 1556 on the 27th of June, the thirteen Stratford Martyrs were burned at the stake near London for their Protestant beliefs.

In 1844, on this date, Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, and his brother Hyrum Smith were killed by a mob at the Carthage, Illinois, jail.

Paul von Mauser was born on June 27, 1838, and would go on to become a weapons designer. Other June 27th birthdays include Emma Goldman, born in 1869, to later become known as a feminist, anarchist and early leftist opponent of Soviet Communism; and Helen Keller, born in 1880 — and she, too, was an anarchist “of the left.”

On June 26, 363, Roman Emperor Julian was killed during the retreat from the Sassanid Empire. On this same date in 1960, Madagascar gained its independence from France; in 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.

Virginia became the tenth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, on June 25, 1788.

Other events on the 25th of June include Custer dying at the Battle of Little Bighorn (1876); Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird debuting (1910), with the composer becoming an instant celebrity; and Civil War veterans arriving at the Great Reunion of 1913 at Gettysburg.