July 3- 1775: General George Washington arrives in Cambridge, MA and formally takes command of the Continental Army during the ongoing Siege of Boston. 1884: Dow Jones publishes its first stock index – the DJ Transportation Average. 1930: The US Congress consolidates all benefits and services for service veterans into a single federal agency, creating the Veterans Administration (VA). 1971: Jim Morrison, the lead vocalist and songwriter of The Doors, is found dead in a bathtub in Paris, apparently the victim of heart failure. He was 27 years old.
July 4- 1776: The Continental Congress issues a formal Declaration of Independence, officially rejecting Great Britain’s continued governance of the 13 colonies.
1826: Former US Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson die of natural causes. John Adams’ final words on his deathbed in Quincy, MA were reported to be “Thomas Jefferson survives,” although Jefferson had died hours earlier at his Monticello home in Virginia. The fourth US president, James Monroe, would also pass away on July 4, five years after his predecessors. 1903: The final section of cable is laid in Honolulu, HI, completing the trans-Pacific telegraph line, enabling international communication. 1939: 61,808 fans pack Yankee Stadium for Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day. Forced to retire weeks earlier after being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the honoree famously declared, “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
July 5- 1687: Isaac Newton’s “Principia,” outlining his revolutionary laws of motion and gravity, is published by the Royal Society in London. 1946: French engineer Louis Réard introduces the modern bikini at a fashion show in Paris. The two-piece bathing suit was modeled by Micheline Bernardini, an exotic dancer from the Casino de Paris, after several professional models turned down the assignment! 1994: Amazon.com is founded by Jeff Bezos within the garage space of his rental home in Bellevue, WA. Although the company was initially founded under the name “Cadabra” (as in abracadabra), Bezos switched the name to Amazon Inc, just months later. 1996: Dolly, a female Finn Dorset sheep and the first clone of an adult mammal, is born at the Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh, Scotland.
July 6- 1785: The US adopts the “dollar” as its national currency along with decimal coinage. 1923: The Russian Empire announces its new name: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). 1957: Althea Gibson becomes the first Black Wimbledon (tennis) champion, defeating Darlene Hard, 6-3, 6-2. 2020: Patrick Mahomes, quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs, signs the largest contract in the history of professional sports, paying him as much as $503 million over the coming 12 years!
July 7- 1912: American Jim Thorpe wins the gold medal in the pentathlon at the Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. The medal, as well as the gold medal he won in the decathlon at the same Games, was stripped by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1913 after it was discovered he had played two summers of semi-pro baseball. The medals were reinstated by the IOC in 1983, 30 years after his death. 1928: Sliced bread is sold for the first time by the Chillicothe Missouri Baking Company, using a slicer invented by Otto Frederick Rohwedder, a resident of St. Joseph, MO. 1946: Recent graduate of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis and future president Jimmy Carter (21) marries Rosalynn Smith (18) at the Methodist Church in their hometown of Plains, GA. Their 77-year marriage, until Mrs. Carter’s death in 2023, makes them the longest married presidential couple in history. 1990: The first “Three Tenors” concert, featuring Plácido Domingo, José Carreras, and Luciano Pavarotti takes place in Rome, Italy. The recording of their performance sold over ten million copies, becoming the best-selling classical album of all time.
July 8- 1777: The first constitution of the newly created “Vermont Republic” (later becoming the 14th state of the US) is the first to prohibit slavery. 1800: Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse administers the first vaccine made from cowpox to his son to prevent smallpox. 1913: Alfred Carlton Gilbert patents his Erector Set, which becomes one of the best-selling toys of its era, with over 30 million sets sold before the company went out of business for good in 1988. 1918: Writer Ernest Hemingway is wounded while serving as an ambulance driver in Italy during WWI. His later novel, “A Farewell to Arms,” published in 1929, is considered semi-autobiographical and based on events surrounding his real-life experiences.
July 9- 1947: In a ceremony held at the Pentagon, General Dwight Eisenhower appoints Florence Blanchfield to be a lieutenant colonel in the Army, making her the first woman in US history to hold permanent military rank. 1955: “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets reaches #1 on Billboard’s singles chart, acknowledged as marking the arrival of a cultural shift to the new musical genre of rock and roll. 1971: US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger arrives in the People’s Republic of China to initiate a “détente” between the United States and China, leading to President Richard Nixon’s historic visit the following year and the establishment of formal diplomatic relations in 1978.
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