On this Day July 2

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History Highlights
History Highlights

1776 – Convening in Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress formally adopts Richard Henry Lee’s resolution for independence from Great Britain. The vote is unanimous, with only New York abstaining.

1881 – President James A. Garfield is shot while walking through a Washington, D.C. railroad station. Vice President Chester Arthur steps in as acting president while Garfield recuperates, but 80 days later, Garfield dies of blood poisoning and Arthur is inaugurated as 21st president. The assassin, 40-year-old Charles Guiteau, had stalked the president for weeks.

1937 – Aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappear over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to fly around the world. They were believed to be headed for Howland Island — about halfway between Hawaii and Australia —  after taking off from Lae, New Guinea.

1964 – President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. The historic measure prohibits discrimination on the basis of race in public places as well as in employment, union membership and voter registration. 

1979 – The Susan B. Anthony dollar coin is introduced, but fails to catch on because many consumers are unable to distinguish it from a quarter.

1994 – While attempting to land, US Air Flight 1016 crashes near Charlotte-Douglas Airport in North Carolina, killing 37 people and seriously injuring 16 others. Investigators determine that wind shear resulting from a thunderstorm caused the plane to plummet to the ground and strike a home.

1997 – “Men in Black,” starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, opens in U.S. theaters. The sci-fi-comedy action movie grosses more than $250 million domestically and helps establish Smith as one of Hollywood’s most bankable leading men.

On this Day June 12

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History Highlights
History Highlights

1963 – Civil rights leader Medgar Evers is shot and killed outside his Jackson, Mississippi home by a member of the Ku Klux Klan. His murder comes just hours after President John F. Kennedy had delivered a national address in support of civil rights.

1978 – David Berkowitz, the so-called “Son of Sam,” is sentenced to six consecutive life prison terms for a string of murders and attacks that terrified New Yorkers for a year.

1981 – Moviegoers meet Indiana Jones for the first time as “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” opens in theaters across the U.S. The movie, starring Harrison Ford, becomes another box office smash for director Steven Spielberg and launches one of the most successful motion picture franchises of all time.

1987 – In one of his most famous Cold War speeches, President Ronald Reagan challenges Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the repressive Communist era in a divided Germany.

1994 – Former football star O.J. Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, are stabbed to death in what leads to one of the highest-profile murder trials of the century. As the prime suspect, O.J. Simpson stands trial for the killings, but is ultimately acquitted. He is later found liable in a civil action brought by the victims’ families.

2016 – A gunman forces his way inside Pulse, an Orlando, Florida nightclub, and opens fire on the predominantly gay crowd, killing 49 people and injuring dozens more. Responding police shoot and kill the gunman, who was later determined to have ties to the terrorist group ISIS. The attack becomes the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history until an October 2017 rampage in Las Vegas.