This Day in History – July 4
Today is Friday, July 4, the 185th day of 2014. There are 180 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight
1974: Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie agrees to military supervision of his government and speedup of democratic reforms.
Other Events
1187: The Arab forces of Sultan Saladin destroy a thirsty and exhausted Crusader army at Hattin in northern Palestine, leading to the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem.
1776: American Declaration of Independence is approved by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The day is now Independence Day in the United States.
1779: French forces take Grenada in West Indies from the British, who retake it four years later.
1862: Lewis Carroll, an Oxford University student narrates a story to a group of friends during a boat trip. The story is later published as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
1946: Republic of the Philippines is founded after 47 years of US rule.
1994: Tutsi rebels seize most of Kigali and another key city in Rwanda, ending the worst of the genocide by Hutu militants in those areas.
1997: The US spacecraft Pathfinder, carrying an explorer vehicle, lands on Mars. It is the first landing on Mars since 1976.
1999: Pope John Paul II blesses a new church that Roman citizens had promised to build 55 years earlier. On June 4, 1944, Allied troops were poised to enter Rome, citizens prayed for deliverance and an hour later German troops withdrew from the city.
2001: Congolese President Joseph Kabila and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni meet for first face-to-face peace talks in Tanzania as part of an effort to end the three-year war in Congo.
2003: Three suspected Muslim militants attack a Shiite mosque in Quetta, Pakistan, opening fire during Friday prayers and killing 53 people.
2007: British Broadcasting Corporation reporter Alan Johnston is released after nearly four months in captivity in the Gaza Strip, where he was held by the shadowy, little-known militant group Army of Islam.
2009: North Korea launches seven ballistic missiles into waters off its east coast in a show of military firepower that defies UN resolutions and draws global expressions of condemnation and concern.
2013: France says it has confirmed that the nerve gas sarin was used “multiple times in a localiSed way” in Syria, including at least once by the regime.
Today’s Birthdays
Nathaniel Hawthorne, US author (1804-1882); Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian soldier-statesman (1807-1882); Louis Armstrong, US jazz musician (1900-1971); Neil Simon, US playwright (1927–); Geraldo Rivera, TV personality/news correspondent (1943–); John Waite, singer (1955–).
— AP
