Category: Today

The Continental Congress adopts a resolution to sever ties with the Kingdom of Great Britain on July 2, 1776. The next year on this date the independent Vermont Republic abolishes slavery, fourteen years before joining the union, thereby gaining the honor of being the first U.S. territory to make slavery against the law.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau died on this date in 1778. July 2 marks the death dates of a number of major American authors:

• Ernest Hemingway, 1961
• Vladimir Nabokov, 1977
• Mario Puzo, 1999

Emancipation Day, or Keti Koti, in Suriname, celebrated on July 1 because, on that day in 1863, the Netherlands “cut the chains” of slavery. (It took another decade for full emancipation to occur, as there was a transition period, but the initial declaration became the celebratory day.)

In 1908, “SOS” is adopted as the international distress signal.

In 2008, allegations of election fraud spur mass rioting in Mongolia.

July 1 birthdays include Lew Rockwell’s in 1944 — Rockwell once served as an aide to Ron Paul, founded the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and is a popular blogger — and singer Debbie Harry.

In 1894 on July 1, private detective Allan Pinkerton died; two years later, author Harriet Beecher Stowe died; other July 1 deaths include:

• Statesman John Hay, 1905
• Composer Erik Satie, 1925
• Omnihypergenius R. Buckminster Fuller, 1983

On June 26, 1997, the Supreme Court of the United States rules that the Communications Decenty Act violates the First Amendment. Six years later, to the date, the Supreme Court rules that gender-based sodomy las are unconstitutional. Exactly six more years later, the Supreme Court decides, in District of Columbia v. Heller, that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitutional protects an individual right to bear arms, at least in the District of Columbia, which is directly supervised by Congress.

Apple ships the first Apple II computer on June 10, 1977.

Born on this day: historian, jazz critic and civil libertarian Nat Hentoff (1925); children’s writer Maurice Sendak (1929); scientist and pioneer of “sociobiology” E. O. Wilson (1929).

June 10 deaths include Alexander the Great (323 BC), Angelina Weld Grimké (1958); and Louis L’Amour (1988).

On June 8, 1972, a 9-year-old girl heard a soldier scream — a warning to run — and a few seconds later she saw the village temple her family had sought refuge in engulfed in flames. It was napalm. American and North Vietnamese forces, fighting over the village, sent her running screaming, her clothes burned off, her skin melting.

A photographer snapped a shot of her grave distress, and it became one of the most unforgettable photographs of the Vietnam War.

There’s something like a happy ending to the story. The girl did not die. The photographer took her to a hospital, and insisted she be treated. Her face had never been affected by the burns, which covered 30 percent of her body, and her skin slowly healed. Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the mother of two children, recently visited with the photographer, Nick Ut, who had saved her life.

The first official move towards secession from the British Empire occurs on June 7, 1776, when Richard Henry Lee presents a resolution to the Continental Congress, which is seconded by John Adams.

In 1883, Andy Jackson becomes the first U.S. president to ride on a train.

Also on June 6, in 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds a federal law banning marijuana. Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent on this case becomes an instant classic

Harriett Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” begins its ten-month serialization in the National Era, an abolitionist publication, on this date in 1851.

Also on June 5, Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith is born (1723); British economist John Maynard Kenes was also born on this date (1883), June 5 deaths include American authors Stephen Crane (1900), author of “The Red Badge of Courage,” and O. Henry, America’s most influential short story writer, ten years later.

Henry Ford puts his first “quadricycle” through a test run on June 4, 1896. Ford would go on to transform transportation by applying the principles of the assembly line to automobile production, which would transform American life . . . and the world.

Born on this date in 1821, Edward Livingston Youmans, American science writer and editor. In 1871 he started publication of the International Scientific Series of then-modern classics of scientific literature (published simultaneously first in New York, London, Paris, and Leipzig, later also in St. Petersburg and Milan), and the next year started the magazine Popular Science Monthly. In these and other venues he promoted the work of British philosopher Herbert Spencer, instigating Spencer to write the popular “The Study of Sociology,” and arranging publication of all of Spencer’s books with D. Appleton & Co., as well as many other international authors – with royalties on the sales (which in Spencer’s case reached 132,000 copies by 1890) going to the authors, despite the lack of an international copyright.