A Focus on History: June 30 – July 6

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June 30

Just three days after the United Nations Security Council voted to provide military assistance to South Korea, president Harry S Truman orders U.S. armed forces to assist in defending that nation from invading North Korean armies. Truman’s dramatic step marked the official entry of the United States into the Korean War. – 1950.

July 1

Homestead, Pa. is the site of a steel strike. Seven strikers and three Pinkertons are killed. Andrew Carnegie hires armed thugs to protect strikebreakers. – 1892.

At midnight, Hong Kong reverts back to Chinese rule in a ceremony attended by British prime minister Tony Blair, Prince Charles of Wales, Chinese president Jiang Zemin, and U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright. – 1997.

July 2

Africans on the Cuban schooner Amistad rise up against their captors, kill two crew members, and seize control of the ship, which had been transporting them to a life of slavery on a sugar plantation in Puerto Principe, Cuba. – 1839.

U.S. president James A. Garfield, who had been in office just less than four months, is shot by an assassin. Garfield lingered for 80 days before dying of complications from the shooting. – 1881.

President Lyndon Johnson signs Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids employers and unions from discriminating on the basis of race, color, gender, nationality, or, religion. – 1964.

July 3

On the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s last attempt at breaking the Union line ends in disastrous failure which brings the most decisive battle of the American Civil War to an end. The Union had 23,000 killed, wounded, or missing in action and the Confederates suffered 25,000 casualties. – 1863.

In the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy cruiser Vincennes shoots down an Iranian passenger jet that it mistakes for a hostile Iranian fighter aircraft. Two missiles were fired from the American warship. The aircraft was hit, and all 290 passengers aboard were killed. In 1996, the U.S. agreed to pay $62 million in damages to the families of the Iranians killed in the attack. – 1988.

July 4

In Philadelphia, Pa., the Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims the independence of the United States of America from Great Britain and its king. The declaration came 442 days after the first volleys of the American Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts and marked an ideological expansion of the conflict that eventually encouraged France’s intervention on behalf of the colonial Patriots. – 1776.

July 5

In the East End of London, revivalist preacher William Booth and his wife, Catherine, establish the Christian Mission, later known as the Salvation Army. Determined to wage war against the evils of poverty and religious indifference with military efficiency, Booth modeled his Methodist sect after the British army, labeling uniformed ministers as officers and new members as recruits. – 1865.

July 6

In Annapolis, Md., the United States Naval Academy admits women for the first time in its history with the induction of 81 female midshipmen. In May 1980, Elizabeth Anne Rowe became the first woman member of the class to graduate. Four years later, Kristine Holderied became the first female midshipman to graduate at the top of her class. – 1976.

An explosion rips through an oil rig in the North Sea, about 120 miles off the northeast coast of Scotland and kills 167 of 225 workers. It was the worst offshore oil-rig disaster in history. – 1988.

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