Today is July 11. On this date:
1798
The U.S. Marine Corps was formally re-established by a congressional act that also created the U.S. Marine Band.
1804
Vice President Aaron Burr mortally wounded former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton during a pistol duel in Weehawken, New Jersey. (Hamilton died the next day.)
1859
Big Ben, the great bell inside the famous London clock tower, chimed for the first time.
1914
Babe Ruth made his Major League baseball debut, pitching the Boston Red Sox to a 4-3 victory over Cleveland.
1915
The Chicago Sunday Tribune ran an article titled, “Blues Is Jazz and Jazz Is Blues.” (It’s believed to be one of the earliest, if not the earliest, uses of the word “jazz” as a musical term by a newspaper.)
1937
American composer and pianist George Gershwin died at a Los Angeles hospital of a brain tumor; he was 38.
1955
The U.S. Air Force Academy swore in its first class of cadets.
1960
The novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee was first published by J.B. Lippincott and Co.
1972
The World Chess Championship opened as grandmasters Bobby Fischer of the U.S. and defending champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union began play in Reykjavik, Iceland. (Fischer won after 21 games.)
1977
The Presidential Medal of Freedom was presented to polio vaccine pioneer Dr. Jonas Salk and (posthumously) to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. by President Jimmy Carter.
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.
1995
The U.N.-designated “safe haven” of Srebrenica in Bosnia-Herzegovina fell to Bosnian Serb forces, who then carried out killings of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
2013
Jim Obergefell and John Arthur were married on the tarmac in Baltimore, then flew back home to Cincinnati. (Obergefell’s lawsuit challenging Ohio’s laws that would not recognize the marriage led to the landmark 2014 Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage.)
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