Today is July 4. This is Independence Day. On this date in:
1776
The Declaration of Independence was adopted by delegates to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
1802
The United States Military Academy officially opened at West Point, New York.
1817
Ground was broken for the Erie Canal in Rome, New York. The middle section of the waterway took three years to complete; the entire canal was finished in 1825.
1826
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both pass away on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
1855
The first edition of the poetry collection “Leaves of Grass” by American poet Walt Whitman was published.
1888
The Centennial Exposition of the Ohio Valley and Central States of 1888, held in Cincinnati at Music Hall and the surrounding area, began its four-month run in honor of the city’s 100th birthday.
1917
During a ceremony in Paris honoring the French hero of the American Revolution, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Charles E. Stanton, an aide to Maj. Gen. John J. Pershing, declared: “Lafayette, we are here!”
1939
Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees delivered his farewell speech in which he called himself “the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
1947
The small central California town of Hollister was overrun by thousands of motorcycling enthusiasts, dozens of whom ended up being arrested, most for drunkenness, in what came to be called the “Hollister Riot.”
1984
Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops opened the Riverbend Music Center in Cincinnati with a concert featuring Ella Fitzgerald.
1987
Klaus Barbie, the former Gestapo chief known as the “Butcher of Lyon,” was convicted by a French court of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison (he died in September 1991).
1997
NASA’s Pathfinder spacecraft landed on Mars, inaugurating a new era in the search for life on the red planet.
2009
Former Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair was fatally shot in a Nashville condo by his mistress, Sahel Kazemi, who then killed herself.
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