1535: Sir Thomas More was executed in England for treason.
1699: Captain William Kidd, the pirate, was captured in Boston, MA, and deported back to England.
1777: British forces captured Fort Ticonderoga during the American Revolution.
1854: In Jackson, MI, the Republican Party held its first convention.
1858: Lyman Blake patented the shoe manufacturing machine.
1885: Louis Pasteur successfully tested his anti-rabies vaccine. The child used in the test later became the director of the Pasteur Institute.
1893: In northwest Iowa 71 people were killed by a tornado.
1905: Fingerprints were exchanged for the first time between officials in Europe and the U.S. The person in question was John Walker.
1917: During World War I, Arab forces led by T.E. Lawrence captured the port of Aqaba from the Turks.
1919: A British dirigible landed in New York at Roosevelt Field. It completed the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by an airship.
1923: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established.
1928: "The Lights of New York" was previewed in New York's Strand Theatre. It was the first all-talking movie.
1932: The postage rate for first class mail in the U.S. went from 2-cents to 3-cents.
1933: The first All-Star baseball game was held in Chicago. The American League beat the National League 4-2.
1942: Diarist Anne Frank and her family took refuge from the Nazis in Amsterdam.
1944: A fire broke out in the main tent of the Ringling Brother, Barnum and Bailey Circus. 169 people died.
1945: U.S. President Truman signed an order creating the Medal of Freedom.
1945: Nicaragua became the first nation to formally accept the United Nations Charter.
1947: "Candid Microphone" began airing on ABC radio.
1948: Frieda Hennok became the first woman to serve as the commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission.
1957: Althea Gibson won the Wimbledon women’s singles tennis title. She was the first black athlete to win the event.
1966: Malawi became a republic within the Commonwealth with Dr. Hastings Banda as its first president.
1967: The Biafran War erupted. The war lasted two-and-a-half years. About 600,000 people died.
1981: Former President of Argentina Isabel Peron was freed after five years of house arrest by a federal court.
1981: The Dupont Company announced an agreement to purchase Conoco, Inc. (Continental Oil Co.) for $7 billion. At the time it was the largest merger in corporate history.
1983: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that retirement plans could not pay women smaller monthly payments solely because of their gender.
1983: Fred Lynn of the California Angels hit the first grand slam in an All-Star game. The American League defeated the National League 13-3.
1985: Martina Navratilova won her 4th consecutive Wimbledon singles title.
1985: The submarine Nautilus arrived in Groton, Connecticut. The vessel had been towed from Mare Island Naval Shipyard.
1987: Sikh extremists made their first of three attacks over a two day period. The gunmen attacked a bus loaded with Hindu passengers. Over the two day period a total of 72 people were killed by the extremists.
1988: 167 North Sea oil workers were killed by explosions and fires that destroyed the Piper Alpha drilling platform.
1988: Several popular beaches were closed in New York City due to medical waste and other debris began washing up on the seashores.
1989: The U.S. Army destroyed its last Pershing 1-A missiles at an ammunition plant in Karnack, TX. The dismantling was under the terms of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
1994: On Storm King Mountain, in Colorado, 14 firefighters were killed while fighting a several-day-old fire.
1995: In Los Angeles, the prosecution rested at the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
1996: Steffi Graf won her seventh Wimbledon title.
1997: The Mars Pathfinder released Sojourner, a robot rover on the surface of Mars. The spacecraft landed on the red planet on July 4th.
1997: In Cambodia, Second Prime Minister Hun Sen ousted First Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh and claimed to have the capital under his control.
1998: Protestants rioted in many parts of Northern Ireland after British authorities blocked an Orange Order march in Portadown.
2000: In Orlando, FL, the body of Cory Erving was found in his vehicle in a pond near his families home. Julius "Dr. J" Erving had reported his son missing on June 4, 2000.
2000: A jury awarded former NHL player Tony Twist $24 million for the unauthorized use of his name in the comic book Spawn and the HBO cartoon series. Co-defendant HBO settled with Twist out of court for an undisclosed amount.
