Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date

1776

The Continental Congress passed a resolution that ''these United Colonies are, and of right, ought to be, Free and Independent States.''

1881

President Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau at the Washington railroad station; Garfield died that September.

1890

Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act.

1932

Democrats nominated New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt for president at their convention in Chicago. Read the original AP story

1937

Famous aviator Amelia Erhardt and her navigator Fred Noonan went missing as the plane they were flying disappeared somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. Although legally declared dead in 1939, their bodies still have never been found.

1947

An object crashed near Roswell, N.M. The Army Air Force later insisted it was a weather balloon, but eyewitness accounts gave rise to speculation it might have been an alien spacecraft.

1956

Elvis Presley first recorded his cover of "Hound Dog" by Big Mama Thornton at RCA Studios in New York City.

1961

Author Ernest Hemingway shot himself to death at his home in Ketchum, Idaho.

1962

The first ever Walmart store was opened in Rogers, Arkansas, by founder Sam Walton.

1964

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination based on race, religion, sex and national origin.

1976

The Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was not inherently cruel or unusual. Florida Attorney General Robert Shevin comments on the ruling.

1994

Colombian soccer player Andres Escobar was shot to death in Medellin, 10 days after accidentally scoring a goal against his own team in World Cup competition.

1998

Apologizing to viewers and Vietnam veterans for ''serious faults'' in its reporting, Cable News Network retracted a story alleging U.S. commandos had used nerve gas to kill American defectors during the war.

2000

Opposition candidate Vicente Fox won Mexico's presidential elections, ending the Institutional Revolutionary Party's 71-year reign.

2020

Socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, was arrested on charges of sex trafficking young girls for Epstein.

1566

French astrologer, physician and prophet Nostradamus died in Salon.

1989

Former Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko died in Moscow at age 79.

1997

Actor James Stewart died in Beverly Hills, Calif., at age 89.

2016

Michael Cimino, American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1939)