
1884 – Statue of Liberty presented to the United States in Paris.
1895 – Katherine Lee Bates publishes “America the Beautiful.”
1905 – Baseball Hall of Fame pitchers Rube Waddell (Athletics) and Cy Young (Boston) match up in a 20-inning classic with Philadelphia winning 4-2.
1919 – Jack Dempsey beats champion Jess Willard, who retired in the third round, in Toledo, Ohio for the world heavyweight boxing championship.
1925 – The former Dreyfus Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts collapses, killing 44 of an estimated 200 patrons dancing in the second floor Pickwick Club.
1933 – Work begins on Oakland Bay Bridge.
1939 – Lou Gehrig is the first Major League Baseball player to have his number (4) retired on his “Appreciation Day” at Yankee Stadium, making the iconic “luckiest man” speech.
1944 – First Japanese kamikaze attack against the United States fleet near Iwo Jima.
1956 – Most intense rainfall — 1.23 inches in 1 minute — in the United States took place in Unionville, Maryland.
1960 – America’s new 50-star flag honoring Hawaiian statehood unfurled.
1964 – Beach Boys’ “I Get Around” reaches #1.
1970 – Casey Kasem’s “American Top 40” debuts on Los Angeles radio.
1977 – Boston Red Sox end nine-game losing streak by smashing a MLB-record eight home runs in a 9-6 win against Toronto at Fenway Park.
1982 – Fourth NASA Space Shuttle Mission: Columbia 4 (STS-4) lands at Edwards Air Force Base.
1988 – US Navy shoots down Iranian civilian airliner over the Strait of Hormuz, kills 290 people.
1996 – Hotmail, a free internet E-mail service, begins.
2006 – Space Shuttle program STS-121 Mission: Space Shuttle Discovery launches at 18:37:55 UTC (2:37 p.m. EDT).
2009 – The Statue of Liberty’s crown reopens to the public after eight years due to security concerns following the World Trade Center attacks.
2018 – Wildfire in Yolo County, California, grows to 82,700 with 2,800 firefighters battling the blaze.
2023 – Hottest global temperature ever recorded as average global temperature tops 17.18 degrees Celsius (62.9 degrees Fahrenheit). The previous record 17.01 degrees Celsius (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit) on July 3, 2023.