1788: New York ratifies the United States Constitution and becomes the 11th state.
1856: Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw is born.
1861: George B. McClellan assumes command of the Army of the Potomac following a disastrous Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run.
1875: Carl Jung is born.
1878: In California, the poet and American West outlaw calling himself "Black Bart" makes his last clean getaway when he steals a safe box from a Wells Fargo stagecoach. The empty box will be found later with a taunting poem inside.1894: Aldous Huxley is born.
1895: Gracie Allen is born.1903: Estes Kefauver is born. He was a firebrand Democratic Senator from Tennessee who fought racial inequality, the mob and Robert Moses all at the same time.
1908: United States Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte issues an order to immediately staff the Office of the Chief Examiner (later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation).1909: Vivian Vance is born. She played the sidekick Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy.
1921: Jean Shepherd is born. He is the author of many books, including the one upon which A Christmas Story is based.
1922: Blake Edwards is born. I know I'm in the minority around these parts, but I never found him the tiniest bit funny.
1926: James Best is born. He is best known for playing Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane on The Dukes of Hazzard but, in his younger days, he played the hard-drinkin, shrew-hatin' Captain Thorne Sherman in the MST3K episode The Killer Shrews. Notice that the shrews are really just big friendly dogs.1928: Stanley Kubrick is born.
1936: The Axis Powers decide to intervene in the Spanish Civil War.
1941: In response to the Japanese occupation of French Indo-China, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the seizure of all Japanese assets in the United States.
1941: Brenton Wood is born. He did the song Gimme A Little Sign.
1943: Peter Hyams is born. He directed cult films like Outland, Stay Tuned and Timecop. He also directed the sequel to Kubrick's 2001, 2010. Here's the trailer for Outland.
1943: Mick Jagger is born.
1944: The first German V-2 rocket hits Great Britain.
1945: The Labour Party wins the United Kingdom general election of July 5 by a landslide, removing Winston Churchill from power.
1945: Helen Mirren is born.
1945: The US Navy cruiser USS Indianapolis arrives at Tinian with the bomb - the Hiroshima bomb!
1947: President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act into United States law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.1949: Roger Taylor, drummer for Queen, is born. Don't get him mixed up with Roger Taylor, drummer for Duran Duran.
1953: Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks, thus beginning the Cuban Revolution.
1956: Following the World Bank's decline to fund building the Aswan High Dam, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal sparking international condemnation.
1957: Nana Visitor is born. She played the delightfully bomabstic Major Kira on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and I still harbor a deep nerd-crush on her.
1959: Kevin Spacey is born.
1963: Syncom 2, the world's first geosynchronous satellite, is launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta B booster.1964: Sandra Bullock is born.
1967: Tim Schafer is born. He designed many of the classic computer games of the 80's and 90's, such as Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and Full Throttle. His most recent project is Psychonauts.1989: A federal grand jury indicts Cornell University student Robert T. Morris, Jr. for releasing the Morris worm, thus becoming the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.
