July 07 in U. S. History

[farmgal]

July 7 is the 188th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar.
There are 177 days remaining until the end of the year.

The terms 7th July, July 7th, and 7/7 (pronounced "Seven-seven") have been widely used in the Western media as a shorthand for the 7 July 2005 bombings on London's transport system. In China, this term is used to denote the Battle of Lugou Bridge started on July 7, 1937, marking the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War.



119 days until Election Day, Tuesday November 2nd, 2010
854 days until Election Day, Tuesday November 6th, 2012


1456 - A retrial verdict acquits Joan of Arc of heresy 25 years after her death.

1534 - European colonization of the Americas: first known exchange between Europeans and natives of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in New Brunswick.

1585 - Treaty of Nemours abolishes tolerance to Protestants in France.

1777 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of Hubbardton

1798 - Quasi-War: the U.S. Congress rescinds treaties with France sparking the "war".

1846 - Mexican-American War: American troops occupy Monterey and Yerba Buena, thus beginning the United States conquest of California.

1863 - United States begins first military draft; exemptions cost $300.


1863 - Civil War: Kit Carson's campaign against the Indians

On this day, Lt. Colonel Christopher "Kit" Carson leaves Santa Fe with his troops, beginning his campaign against the Indians of New Mexico and Arizona. A famed mountain man before the Civil War, Carson was responsible for waging a destructive war against the Navajo that resulted in their removal from the Four Corners area to southeastern New Mexico.

Carson was perhaps the most famous trapper and guide in the West. He traveled with the expeditions of John C. Fremont in the 1840s, leading Fremont through the Great Basin. Fremont's flattering portrayal of Carson made the mountain man a hero when the reports were published and widely read in the east. Later, Carson guided Stephen Watts Kearney to New Mexico during the Mexican-American War. In the 1850s he became the Indian agent for New Mexico, a position he left in 1861 to accept a commission as lieutenant colonel in the 1st New Mexico Volunteers.

Although Carson's unit saw action in the New Mexico battles of 1862, he was most famous for his campaign against the Indians. Despite his reputation for being sympathetic and accommodating to tribes such as the Mescaleros, Kiowas, and Navajo, Carson waged a brutal campaign against the Navajo in 1863. When bands of Navajo refused to accept confinement on reservations, Carson terrorized the Navajo lands--burning crops, destroying villages, and slaughtering livestock. Carson rounded up some 8,000 Navajo and marched them across New Mexico for imprisonment on the Bosque Redondo, over 300 miles from their homes, where they remained for the duration of the war.

www.history.com/this-day-in-history/kit-carsons-campaign-against-the-indians


1865 - American Civil War: four conspirators in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln are hanged.

1885 - G. Moore Peters of Xenia, OH patented the cartridge-loading machine. In 1887 Peters incorporated the Peters Cartridge Company. The company developed a round-table loading machine for mechanically loading shotgun shells. These were the first machine-loaded shotgun shells. In the early 1900s, about 1,000 people were employed producing, loading and packing cartridges. The plant was a major provider of cartridges for the U. S., Great Britain, and other Allied countries. During World War I, Peters produced an average of 1.5 million cartridges a day.

1898 - President William McKinley signs the Newlands Resolution annexing Hawaii as a territory of the United States.


1900 - Warren Earp killed in Arizona

Warren Earp, the youngest of the famous clan of gun fighting brothers, is murdered in an Arizona saloon.

Nicholas and Virginia Earp raised a family of five sons and four daughters on a series of farms in Illinois and Iowa. Three of the Earps' sons grew up to win lasting infamy. On October 26, 1881, Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp fought a brief shoot-out with the Clantons and McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona. The Earp brothers, along with their friend Doc Holliday, managed to kill all three of their opponents. The gun battle-which was named after a nearby livery stable called the O.K. Corral-later became a favorite topic of sensationalistic dime novel writers and moviemakers. Ever since, Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan have been icons of the Old West.

The youngest Earp brother, however, did not share in the fame of his older brothers. Warren Earp was probably in Tombstone on the day of the famous gunfight, but for reasons that remain unclear, Warren did not join in the gunfight (the eldest Earp brother, James, did not participate either). Warren, however, was involved in the bloody series of revenge killings that followed the shoot-out.

Within six months of the first gunfight, Morgan Earp was assassinated and Virgil Earp was badly wounded. Wyatt presumed the Clantons and McLaurys were behind the attacks. Determined to strike back, Wyatt turned for help to his little brother, Warren. Together with Doc Holliday, the two brothers took their vengeance, killing two men suspected of having been behind Morgan's murderer. In danger now of being arrested for murder, the three men fled to Colorado.

After he parted ways with Wyatt in Colorado, the record of Warren's life becomes obscure. He apparently traveled around the West for several years before finally returning to Arizona. On this day in 1900, Warren reportedly had too much to drink at the Headquarters Saloon in Willcox, Arizona. He began to abuse some of the customers, and a man named John Boyett killed him in a gunfight. Later, Boyett was tried for murder and found innocent on the grounds that he had acted in self-defense.

www.history.com/this-day-in-history/warren-earp-killed-in-arizona


1915 - A severe wind and thunderstorm caused heavy damage and 38 deaths in and near Cincinnati, OH. Many older buildings were demolished. The steamship "Dick Fulton" was overturned. (The Weather Channel)

1915 - World War I: end of First Battle of the Isonzo.

1915 - A International Railway (New York – Ontario) trolley with an extreme overload of 157 passengers crashes near Queenston, Ontario, killing 15.

1928 – Sliced bread is sold for the first time by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri. It is described as “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped".


1930 - Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser begins construction of the Boulder Dam (now known as Hoover Dam).

On this day in 1930, construction of the Hoover Dam begins. Over the next five years, a total of 21,000 men would work ceaselessly to produce what would be the largest dam of its time, as well as one of the largest manmade structures in the world.

Although the dam would take only five years to build, its construction was nearly 30 years in the making. Arthur Powell Davis, an engineer from the Bureau of Reclamation, originally had his vision for the Hoover Dam back in 1902, and his engineering report on the topic became the guiding document when plans were finally made to begin the dam in 1922.

Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States and a committed conservationist, played a crucial role in making Davis’ vision a reality. As secretary of commerce in 1921, Hoover devoted himself to the erection of a high dam in Boulder Canyon, Colorado. The dam would provide essential flood control, which would prevent damage to downstream farming communities that suffered each year when snow from the Rocky Mountains melted and joined the Colorado River. Further, the dam would allow the expansion of irrigated farming in the desert, and would provide a dependable supply of water for Los Angeles and other southern California communities.

Even with Hoover's exuberant backing and a regional consensus around the need to build the dam, Congressional approval and individual state cooperation were slow in coming. For many years, water rights had been a source of contention among the western states that had claims on the Colorado River. To address this issue, Hoover negotiated the Colorado River Compact, which broke the river basin into two regions with the water divided between them. Hoover then had to introduce and re-introduce the bill to build the dam several times over the next few years before the House and Senate finally approved the bill in 1928.

In 1929, Hoover, now president, signed the Colorado River Compact into law, claiming it was "the most extensive action ever taken by a group of states under the provisions of the Constitution permitting compacts between states."

Once preparations were made, the Hoover Dam's construction sprinted forward: The contractors finished their work two years ahead of schedule and millions of dollars under budget. Today, the Hoover Dam is the second highest dam in the country and the 18th highest in the world. It generates enough energy each year to serve over a million people, and stands, in Hoover Dam artist Oskar Hansen's words, as "a monument to collective genius exerting itself in community efforts around a common need or ideal."

www.history.com/this-day-in-history/7/7


1936 - Phillips screwdriver: Several U.S. patents were issued for the Phillips-head screw and screwdriver to its inventor, Henry F. Phillips (Nos. 2,046,343, 2,046,837 -40). They describe a fastening system involving a shallow cruciform recess and a matching driver with a tapering tip that conveniently self-centers in the screw head. Phillips founded the Phillips Screw Company to license his patents. After three years of rejection, he finally persuaded the American Screw Company to spend $500,000 developing a manufacturing process and manufacture the screws. General Motors was convinced to use the screws on its 1936 Cadillac. By 1940 virtually every American automaker had switched to Phillips screws.

1941 - World War II: U.S. forces land in Iceland to forestall an invasion by Germany.

1941 - World War II: Beirut is occupied by Free France and British troops.

1946 - Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini becomes the first American to be canonized.

1946 - Howard Hughes nearly dies when his XF-11 spy plane prototype crashes in a Beverly Hills neighborhood.

1947 - Alleged and disputed Roswell UFO incident.

1952 - Six churches met to form the Southern Baptist Association of Colorado, the firstorganization of this denomination in the state.

1953 - Che Guevara sets out on a trip through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador.

1956 “The Wayward Wind" by Gogi Grant topped the charts

1958 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Alaska Statehood Act into United States law.

1959 - 14:28 UT Venus occults the star Regulus. This rare event is used to determine the diameter of Venus and the structure of the Venusian atmosphere.

1962 - "The Stripper" by David Rose topped the charts

1969 - In Canada, the Official Languages Act is adopted making the French language equal to the English language throughout the Federal government.


1981 - O'Connor nominated to Supreme Court

President Ronald Reagan nominates Sandra Day O'Connor, an Arizona court of appeals judge, to be the first woman Supreme Court justice in U.S. history. On September 21, the Senate unanimously approved her appointment to the nation's highest court, and on September 25 she was sworn in by Chief Justice Warren Burger.

Sandra Day was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1930. She grew up on her family's cattle ranch in southeastern Arizona and attended Stanford University, where she studied economics. A legal dispute over her family's ranch stirred her interest in law, and in 1950 she enrolled in Stanford Law School. She took just two years to receive her law degree and was ranked near the top of her class. Upon graduation, she married John Jay O'Connor III, a classmate.

Because she was a woman, no law firm she applied to would hire her for a suitable position, so she turned to the public sector and found work as a deputy county attorney for San Mateo, California. In 1953, her husband was drafted into the U.S. Army as a judge, and the O'Connors lived for three years in West Germany, with Sandra working as a civilian lawyer for the army. In 1957, they returned to the United States and settled down in Phoenix, Arizona, where they had three children in the six years that followed. During this time, O'Connor started a private law firm with a partner and became involved in numerous volunteer activities.

In 1965, she became an assistant attorney general for Arizona and in 1969 was appointed to the Arizona State Senate to occupy a vacant seat. Subsequently elected and reelected to the seat, she became the first woman in the United States to hold the position of majority leader in a state senate. In 1974, she was elected a superior court judge in Maricopa County and in 1979 was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals by Governor Bruce Babbitt, a Democrat.

Two years later, on July 7, 1981, President Reagan nominated her to the Supreme Court to fill the seat of retiring justice Stewart Potter, an Eisenhower appointee. In his 1980 presidential campaign, Reagan had promised to appoint a woman to the high court at one of his earliest opportunities, and he chose O'Connor out of a group of some two dozen male and female candidates to be his first appointee to the high court.

O'Connor, known as a moderate conservative, faced opposition from anti-abortion groups who criticized her judicial defense of legalized abortion on several occasions. Liberals celebrated the appointment of a woman to the Supreme Court but were critical of some of her views. Nevertheless, at the end of her confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill, the Senate voted unanimously to endorse her nomination. On September 25, 1981, she was sworn in as the 102nd justice--and first woman justice--in Supreme Court history.

Initially regarded as a member of the court's conservative faction, she later emerged from William Rehnquist's shadow (chief justice from 1986 to 2005) as a moderate and pragmatic conservative. On social issues, she often voted with liberal justices, and in several cases she upheld abortion rights. During her time on the bench, she was known for her dispassionate and carefully researched opinions and was regarded as a prominent justice because of her tendency to moderate the sharply divided Supreme Court.

O'Connor announced her retirement from the Supreme Court on July 1, 2005. Her decision sparked dismay among pro-choice groups who worried that President George W. Bush would choose a replacement likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a woman's right to an abortion. She was replaced by Samuel Alito, who became the court's 110th justice in January 2006.

www.history.com/this-day-in-history/oconnor-nominated-to-supreme-court


1983 - Cold War: Samantha Smith, a U.S. schoolgirl, flies to the Soviet Union at the invitation of Secretary General Yuri Andropov.

2005 - A series of four explosions occurs on London's transport system killing 56 people, including four alleged suicide bombers and injuring over 700 others.

2006 - The Western Black Rhinoceros is declared extinct due to poaching.



Births:

1851 - Charles Tindley

American Methodist minister and gospel music composer.

Often referred to as "The Prince of Preachers", he educated himself, became a minister and founded one of the largest Methodist congregations serving the African-American community on the East Coast of the United States. The Tindley Temple United Methodist Church in Philadelphia was named for him.

Tindley's father was a slave, but his mother was free. Tindley himself was thus considered to be free, but even so he grew up among slaves. After the Civil War, he moved to Philadelphia. He continued his education while working as a church janitor, teaching himself Hebrew and Greek and eventually earning a doctorate. After 25 years, he became the pastor of the same church at which he had been a janitor. Under his leadership, the church grew from 130 to a multiracial congregation of 10,000.

Tindley was a noted songwriter and composer of gospel hymns and is recognized as one of the founding fathers of American gospel music. Five of his hymns appear in the revised Methodist hymnal, which is used worldwide. His composition "I'll Overcome Someday" is credited by some observers to be the basis for the U.S. Civil Rights anthem "We Shall Overcome,". The song "We Shall Overcome" was composed by artists at the Highlander Folk School in 1947: Tindley's song had been brought to the school in the 1930s by tobacco workers from Charleston, South Carolina. Zilphia Horton, cultural worker and educator, taught the song at the school, where others, such as Pete Seager, Guy Carawan, heard it. They altered Tindley's refrain "I'll Overcome Someday" to "We Shall Overcome" and the song was slowed down to be sung as a march hymn. (d. 1933)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Tindley


1861 - Nettie Maria Stevens (died 1912) Born in Cavendish, Vermont, the year that the Civil War began, despite difficult times and limited women's educational opportunities, Stevens became one of the first American women to achieve recognition for her contributions to scientific research. As a cell biologist and geneticist, her great contribution to science was as one of the first scientists to find that sex is determined by a single difference between two classes of sperm - the presence or absence of an X chromosome.
1899 - George Cukor, American director (d. 1983)

1900 - Earle E. Partridge, United States Air Force general (d. 1990)

1901 - Sam Katzman, American film producer (d. 1973)

1906 - Satchel Paige, American baseball player (d. 1982)

1913 - Pinetop Perkins, American blues musician

1915 - Margaret Abigail Walker Alexander, African-American novelist and poet(d. 1998)

1924 - Mary Ford, American singer (d. 1977)

1925 - Wally Phillips, American radio personality (d. 2008)

1927 - Doc Severinsen, American composer and musician

1930 - Henry (Hank) Mobley, American Jazz composer and saxophonist (d. 1986)

1930 - Theodore Edgar McCarrick, American Cardinal

1931 - David Eddings, American fantasy author (d. 2009)

1933 - David McCullough, American historian and author

1943 - Joel Siegel, American film critic (d. 2007)

1946 - Joe Spano, American actor

1960 - Kevin A. Ford, American astronaut


Deaths:

1647 - Thomas Hooker, Connecticut colonial American pastor and an originator of the earliestsystem of federal government in America. (b. 1596)

1701 - William Stoughton, American judge at the Salem witch trials (b. 1631)

1865 - Mary Surratt, Lincoln conspirator (b. 1823)

1865 - Lewis Paine, Lincoln conspirator (b. 1844)

1865 - David Herold, Lincoln conspirator (b. 1842)

1865 - George Atzerodt, Lincoln conspirator (b. 1833)

1913 - Edward Burd Grubb, Jr., American Civil War Union Brevet Brigadier General (b. 1841)

1925 - Clarence Hudson White American photographer (b. 1871)

1932 - Henry Eyster Jacobs, American Lutheran theologian (b. 1844)

1949 - Bunk Johnson, American musician

1964 - Lillian Copeland, American athlete (b. 1904)

1967 - Vivien Leigh, English actress (b. 1913)

1971 - Ub Iwerks, American artist, director, and cartoonist (b. 1901)

1972 - Athenagoras, Patriarch of Constantinople (b. 1886)\

1975 - Ruffian, American thoroughbred racehorse (b. 1972)

1976 - Walter Giesler, American soccer coach (b. 1910)

1983 - Herman Kahn (born 1922) American physicist, who worked on nuclear strategy as a military analyst (1948-61). Later, he became known as a futurist making controversial studies of nuclear warfare in his books, including his provocative analysis of nuclear war in On Thermonuclear War (1960) and his predictions of the probability and survivability of nuclear war in Thinking About the Unthinkable (1962). He held that since it might be possible to survive a nuclear war, it was essential to plan to do just that. Kahn founded the influential Hudson Institute in New York in 1961 to study aspects of national security related to narcotics policy, international economics and trade, population, transportation, crime, medicine

1984 - Carl Boenish, American father of BASE jumping (b. 1941)

1990 - Bill Cullen, American game show host (b. 1920)



Christian Feast Day:
Æthelburg of Faremoutiers

Illidius

Job of Maniava (Ukrainian Orthodox Church)





www.weatherforyou.com/cgi-bin/weather_history/today2S.pl
www.todayinsci.com/7/7_07.htm
www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi
www.amug.org/~jpaul/jul07.html
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/7/7
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_7