#TodayInHistory – July 9

July 9 – Some important events on this day.

1401 👉🏼 Turko-Mongol ruler Tamerlane (Timur) destroys Baghdad, killing 20,000
1776 👉🏼 Declaration of Independence is read to George Washington’s troops (NY)
1790 👉🏼 Russo-Swedish War: Second Battle of Svensksund – in the Baltic Sea, the Swedish Navy captures one third of the Russian fleet
1815 👉🏼 1st natural gas well in US is discovered
1816 👉🏼 Argentina declares independence from Spain.
1852 👉🏼 Fire destroys 1,100 construction sites in Montreal, Canada
1868 👉🏼 Louisiana and South Carolina are the last states to ratify the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing civil rights
1893 👉🏼 Daniel Hale Williams III repairs the torn pericardium of a knife wound patient, James Cornish, without penicillin or blood transfusion

1917 👉🏼 British battleship HMS Vanguard explodes at Scapa Flow (the result of an internal explosion of faulty cordite), killing 804.
On this day a series of internal explosions blew apart the Royal Navy battleship stationed in Scarpa Flow in the Orkney Islands during WWI. Of the 845 men on board just two survived the sinking late at night.
The wreck was declared a war grave in 1984. It remains one of the Royal Navy’s worst disasters.

1953 👉🏼 1st helicopter passenger service (NYC)
1971 👉🏼 Henry Kissinger visits the People’s Republic of China to negotiate a detente between the US and China
1982 👉🏼 Michael Fagan breaks into Buckingham Palace and enters the Queen’s bedroom in Buckingham Palace, London
2002 👉🏼 The African Union is established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The first chairman is Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa.
2017 👉🏼 Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi proclaims victory over Islamic State forces in Mosul
2018 👉🏼 US coffee company Starbucks announces it will stop using plastic straws by 2020, reducing use of more than 1 billion straws a year