While You Were Setting Off Fireworks, This Also Happen

July 4th is the feast day of Saint Elizabeth of Portugal

The Aphelion, the point in the year when the Earth is farthest from the Sun, occurs around this date.

• 362 BC – Battle of Mantinea: The Thebans, led by Epaminondas, defeated the Spartans.
• 1054 – A supernova, called SN 1054, is seen by Chinese Song dynasty, Arab, and possibly Amerindian observers near the star Zeta Tauri. For several months it remains bright enough to be seen during the day. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula.
• 1774 – Orangetown Resolutions are adopted in the Province of New York, one of many protests against the British Parliament’s Coercive Acts.
• 1776 – American Revolution: The United States Declaration of Independence is adopted by the Second Continental Congress.

• 1778 – American Revolutionary War: U.S. forces under George Clark capture Kaskaskia during the Illinois campaign.
• 1802 – At West Point, New York, the United States Military Academy opens.
• 1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is announced to the American people.
• 1817 – In Rome, New York, construction on the Erie Canal begins.
• 1826 – John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, respectively the second and third presidents of the United States, die the same day, on the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the United States Declaration of Independence. Adams’ last words were, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”
• 1827 – Slavery is abolished in the State of New York.
• 1831 – Samuel Francis Smith writes “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” for the Boston, Massachusetts July 4 festivities.

• 1832 – John Neal delivers the first public lecture in the US to advocate the rights of women. 
• 1837 – Grand Junction Railway, the world’s first long-distance railway, opens between Birmingham and Liverpool.
• 1838 – The Iowa Territory is organized.
• 1845 – Henry David Thoreau moves into a small cabin on Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau’s account of his two years there, Walden, will become a touchstone of the environmental movement.
• 1855 – The first edition of Walt Whitman‘s book of poems, Leaves of Grass, is published In Brooklyn.
• 1862 – Lewis Carroll tells Alice Liddell a story that would grow into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequels.

• 1863 – American Civil War: Siege of Vicksburg: Vicksburg, Mississippi surrenders to U.S. forces under Ulysses S. Grant after 47 days of siege. One hundred fifty miles up the Mississippi River, a Confederate army is repulsed at the Battle of Helena, Arkansas.
• 1863 – American Civil War: The Army of Northern Virginia withdraws from the battlefield after losing the Battle of Gettysburg, signalling an end to the Confederate invasion of U.S. territory.
• 1886 – The Canadian Pacific Railway‘s first scheduled train from Montreal arrives in Port Moody on the Pacific coast, after six days of travel.
• 1901 – William Howard Taft becomes American governor of the Philippines.
• 1903 – The Philippine–American War is officially concluded.
• 1910 – The Johnson–Jeffries riots occur after African-American boxer Jack Johnson knocks out white boxer Jim Jeffries in the 15th round. Between 11 and 26 people are killed and hundreds more injured.

• 1911 – A massive heat wave strikes the northeastern United States, killing 380 people in eleven days and breaking temperature records in several cities.
• 1913 – President Woodrow Wilson addresses American Civil War veterans at the Great Reunion of 1913.
• 1914 – The funeral of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie takes place in Vienna, six days after their assassinations in Sarajevo.
• 1918 – World War I: The Battle of Hamel, a successful attack by the Australian Corps against German positions near the town of Le Hamel on the Western Front.
• 1918 – Bolsheviks kill Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family (Julian calendar date).
• 1927 – First flight of the Lockheed Vega.
• 1939 – Lou Gehrig, recently diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, informs a crowd at Yankee Stadium that he considers himself “The luckiest man on the face of the earth”, then announces his retirement from major league baseball.
• 1941 – Nazi crimes against the Polish nation: Nazi troops massacre Polish scientists and writers in the captured Ukrainian city of Lviv.
• 1941 – World War II: The Burning of the Riga synagogues: The Great Choral Synagogue in German-occupied Riga is burnt with 300 Jews locked in the basement.
• 1942 – World War II: The 250-day Siege of Sevastopol in the Crimea ends when the city falls to Axis forces.
• 1943 – World War II: The Battle of Kursk, the largest full-scale battle in history and the world’s largest tank battle, begins in the village of Prokhorovka.

• 1943 – World War II: In Gibraltar, a Royal Air Force B-24 Liberator bomber crashes into the sea in an apparent accident moments after takeoff, killing sixteen passengers on board, including general Władysław Sikorski, the commander-in-chief of the Polish Army and the Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile; only the pilot survives.
• 1946 – The Kielce pogrom against Jewish Holocaust survivors in Poland.
• 1946 – After 381 years of near-continuous colonial rule by various powers, the Philippines attains full independence from the United States.
• 1947 – The “Indian Independence Bill” is presented before the British House of Commons, proposing the independence of the Provinces of British India into two sovereign countries: India and Pakistan.
• 1950 – Cold War: Radio Free Europe first broadcasts.
• 1951 – Cold War: A court in Czechoslovakia sentences American journalist William N. Oatis to ten years in prison on charges of espionage.
• 1951 – William Shockley announces the invention of the junction transistor.
• 1954 – Rationing ends in the United Kingdom.
• 1960 – Due to the post-Independence Day admission of Hawaii as the 50th U.S. state on August 21, 1959, the 50-star flag of the United States debuts in Philadelphia, almost ten and a half months later (see Flag Acts (United States)).
• 1961 – On its maiden voyage, the Soviet nuclear-powered submarine K-19 suffers a complete loss of coolant to its reactor. The crew are able to effect repairs, but 22 of them die of radiation poisoning over the following two years.

• 1966 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Freedom of Information Act into United States law. The act went into effect the next year.
• 1976 – Israeli commandos raid Entebbe airport in Uganda, rescuing all but four of the passengers and crew of an Air France jetliner seized by Palestinian terrorists.
• 1976 – The U.S. celebrates its Bicentennial.
• 1977 – The George Jackson Brigade plants a bomb at the main power substation for the Washington state capitol in Olympia, in solidarity with a prison strike at the Walla Walla State Penitentiary Intensive Security Unit.
• 1982 – Three Iranian diplomats and a journalist are kidnapped in Lebanon by Phalange forces, and their fate remains unknown.
• 1987 – In France, former Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie (a.k.a. the “Butcher of Lyon”) is convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life imprisonment.
• 1994 – Rwandan genocide: Kigali, the Rwandan capital, is captured by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, ending the genocide in the city.
• 1997 – NASA‘s Pathfinder space probe lands on the surface of Mars.

• 1998 – Japan launches the Nozomi probe to Mars, joining the United States and Russia as a space exploring nation.
• 2001 – Vladivostock Air Flight 352 crashes on approach to Irkutsk Airport killing all 145 people on board.^[3]
• 2004 – The cornerstone of the Freedom Tower is laid on the World Trade Center site in New York City.
• 2004 – Greece beats Portugal in the UEFA Euro 2004 Final and becomes European Champion for first time in its history.
• 2005 – The Deep Impact collider hits the comet Tempel 1.
• 2006 – Space Shuttle program: Discovery launches STS-121 to the International Space Station. The event gained wide media attention as it was the only shuttle launch in the program’s history to occur on the United States’ Independence Day.^[4]
• 2009 – The Statue of Liberty‘s crown reopens to the public after eight years of closure due to security concerns following the September 11 attacks.
• 2009 – The first of four days of bombings begins on the southern Philippine island group of Mindanao.
• 2012 – The discovery of particles consistent with the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider is announced at CERN.
• 2015 – Chile claims its first title in international football by defeating Argentina in the 2015 Copa América Final.

Births 

• 1804 – Nathaniel Hawthorne, American novelist and short story writer (d. 1864)
• 1872 – Calvin Coolidge, American lawyer and politician, 30th President of the United States (d. 1933)
• 1881 – Ulysses S. Grant III, American general (d. 1968)
• 1883 – Rube Goldberg, American sculptor, cartoonist, and engineer (d. 1970)
• 1927 – Neil Simon, American playwright and screenwriter (d. 2018)

Deaths 

• 965 – Benedict V, pope of the Catholic Church
• 1826 – John Adams, American lawyer and politician, 2nd President of the United States (b. 1735)
• 1826 – Thomas Jefferson, American architect, lawyer, and politician, 3rd President of the United States (b. 1743)
• 1831 – James Monroe, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 5th President of the United States (b. 1758)
• 1926 – Pier Giorgio Frassati, Italian activist and saint (b. 1901)
• 1934 – Marie Curie, French-Polish physicist and chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1867)^[25]
• 2008 – Thomas M. Disch, American author and poet (b. 1940)

Here are some words from the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence,  Charles Carroll.

On the mercy of my Redeemer I rely for salvation and on His merits, not on the works I have done in obedience to His precepts.

Grateful to Almighty God for the blessings which, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, He had conferred on my beloved country in her emancipation and on myself in permitting me, under circumstances of mercy, to live to the age of 89 years, and to survive the fiftieth year of independence, adopted by Congress on the 4th of July 1776, which I originally subscribed on the 2d day of August of the same year and of which I am now the last surviving signer.

I, Charles Carroll. . . . give and bequeath my soul to God who gave it, my body to the earth, hoping that through and by the merits, sufferings, and mediation of my only Savior and Jesus Christ, I may be admitted into the Kingdom prepared by God for those who love, fear and truly serve Him.