This Day in History— July 2
Today is the 183rd day of 2019. There are182 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1993: A floating shrine sinks in Bocaue, Philippines, killing 315 worshippers during an annual nine-day religious festival.
OTHER EVENTS
1502: Conflict between French and Spanish over partition of Naples breaks out in open warfare in Italy.
1776: The Continental Congress declares American Independence.
1777: Vermont became the first American colony to abolish slavery.
1860: Russians found Vladivostok near Korean border.
1890: Brussels Act is passed by international conference to eradicate African slave trade and liquor traffic with primitive peoples.
1937: US aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappear during an attempt to cross the Pacific.
1964: A century after the Civil War was fought, US President Lyndon B Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act against racial discrimination.
1966: France explodes an atomic bomb at a Pacific atoll in first series of six tests.
1976: North and South Vietnam are reunited officially after more than 20 years of war.
1991: Heavy fighting erupts in Slovenia with Yugoslav army using warplanes and artillery to help units trapped by Slovene forces.
1992: The United States completes a worldwide withdrawal of their tactical nuclear weapons marking the end of an era that began with rapid nuclear build-up in the early 1950s.
1994: Colombian soccer player Andres Escobar is slain in Medellin for accidentally scoring a goal against his own team during a game against the United States.
1997: A supertanker hits a reef in Tokyo Bay, spilling 13,400 tons of crude oil, making it the worst oil disaster in Japanese history.
2002: US millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett becomes the first person to circumnavigate the world solo in a balloon.
2006: Thousands of people march through Paris to protest plans to tighten restrictions on immigration and step up deportations of immigrant families with children who are in France illegally.
2010: Taliban suicide attackers storm a four-storey house used by an American aid organisation in north Afghanistan, killing four people before dying in a fierce five-hour gunbattle with Afghan security forces.
2011: Serbia and Kosovo have struck deals on several practical issues that will make life easier for citizens — the first accords between the two countries since Kosovo declared independence in 2008.
2012: Physicists say they have all but proven that the “God particle” exists. They gave a footprint and a shadow and the only thing left is to see for themselves the elusive subatomic particle believed to give all matter in the universe its size and shape.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Wislawa Szymborska, Polish poet and Nobel laureate (1923-2012); Larry David, writer/director (1947- ); Jerry Hall, model/actress (1956- ); Lindsay Lohan, actress (1986- )
— AP
