#TodayInHistory – July 4

July 4 – Some important events on this day.

1187 👉🏼 Battle of Hittin (Tiberias): 1st sultan of Egypt and Syria Saladin defeats Reinoud of Châtillo

1776 👉🏼 According to popular legend the Liberty Bell rings for the Second Continental Congress.
Originally it was the bell for the Pennsylvania State House, now called Independence Hall. It was ordered by the Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly Isaac Norris in 1751 from the Whitechapel Foundry in London.
The bell cracked on its first test ring so it was then melted down and recast by local metalworkers John Pass and John Stow in Philadelphia and inscribed with the message “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof”.
The bell’s famous crack formed in the 1830s. Efforts were made to repair the bell in 1846 by widening the crack but these failed. As a result the bell hasn’t rung in living memory.
In the 18th century the bell became a national symbol of liberty and more commonly known as the Liberty Bell. Abolitionists striving to end slavery were inspired by its inscription, and it was a unifying symbol after the US Civil War when it toured the country. The American Women’s Suffrage movement also adopted the bell in their push for voting rights.

1776 👉🏼 US Congress proclaims the Declaration of Independence and independence from Britain.
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1785 👉🏼 James Hutton, geologist, publicly reads an abstract of his theory of uniformitarianism for the first time at the meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
1803 👉🏼 The Louisiana Purchase is announced to the American people by President Thomas Jefferson
1827 👉🏼 Slavery abolished in New York
1838 👉🏼 Huskar Colliery Mining Disaster in Silkstone England: mining pit floods drown 26 children
1842 👉🏼 ‘Mines and Collieries Act’ bans women and children working underground
1865 👉🏼 First edition of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll is published
1884 👉🏼 Statue of Liberty presented to US in Paris
1892 👉🏼 Western Samoa changes the International Date Line, so that year there were 367 days in this country, with two occurrences of Monday, July 4
1894 👉🏼 Republic of Hawaii proclaimed, Sanford B Dole as president
1917 👉🏼 Troops of the Russian Provisional Government open fire on protesters in Petrograd during the ‘July Days’ of unrest

1918 👉🏼 Ottoman Sultan Mehmed VI ascends to the throne.
The collapse and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire was a long and bitter affair, comprising revolutions, a disastrous world war and infighting.
Mehmed VI became the sultan just prior to the end of World War I and while the Ottomans were in the middle of exterminating the Armenian population. He would not last long. Months after his reign was proclaimed, Allied forces occupied Constantinople at the end of the war, and this awoke a Turkish national uprising led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
On 1 November 1922 the sultanate was abolished and Mehmed was expelled from the country (he is photographed leaving his palace through the back door) where he would begin an exile in Italy that lasted until his death in 1926. Ataturk took over and formed the modern Turkish republic.

1934 👉🏼 Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard patents the chain-reaction design for the atomic bomb
1941 👉🏼 Howard Florey and Norman Heatley meet for 1st time, 11 days later they successfully recreate penicillin

1944 👉🏼 1st Japanese kamikaze attack, US fleet near Iwo Jima.
In the United States this photograph has become one of the most significant and recognizable images of World War II.
Later, it became the only photograph to win the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in the same year as its publication.
The image was used by Felix de Weldon in 1954 to sculpt the Marine Corps War Memorial located adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery just outside Washington, D.C. The memorial is dedicated to all Marines who died for their country past and present.

1954 👉🏼 Meat and all other food rationing officially ends in Britain, nine years after the end of World War II
2009 👉🏼 The Statue of Liberty’s crown reopens to the public after 8 years, due to security reasons following the World Trade Center attacks
2015 👉🏼 Unesco grants World Heritage Status to vineyards in Champagne, France along with Singapore’s Botanical Gardens, Diyarbakir Fortress (Turkey) and Maymand Caves (Iran)
2017 👉🏼 North Korea tests first successful intercontinental ballistic missile into Sea of Japan
2019 👉🏼 Record temperatures in Alaska as Anchorage reaches 90F (32C)