This is the weekend of Saturday, July 6, and Sunday, July 7, the 188th and 189th day of 2024. There are 177 days left in the year as of Sunday.
On July 6, 1957, Althea Gibson became the first Black tennis player to win a Wimbledon singles title as she defeated fellow American Darlene Hard 6-3, 6-2.
Also on this date:
In 1483, England’s King Richard III was crowned in Westminster Abbey.
In 1777, during the American Revolution, British forces captured Fort Ticonderoga (ty-kahn-dur-OH’-gah).
In 1885, French scientist Louis Pasteur tested an anti-rabies vaccine on 9-year-old Joseph Meister, who had been bitten by an infected dog; the boy did not develop rabies.
In 1933, the first All-Star baseball game was played at Chicago’s Comiskey Park; the American League defeated the National League 4-2 behind winning pitcher Lefty Gomez of the New York Yankees.
In 1942, Anne Frank, her parents and sister entered a “secret annex” in an Amsterdam building where they were later joined by four other people; they hid from Nazi occupiers for two years before being discovered and arrested.
In 1944, an estimated 168 people died in a fire that broke out during a performance in the main tent of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford, Connecticut.
In 1945, President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order establishing the Medal of Freedom.
In 1967, Nigerian forces invade the Republic of Biafra, sparking the Nigerian Civil War.
In 1988, 167 North Sea oil workers were killed when explosions and fires destroyed a drilling platform.
In 2013, an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 from Seoul, South Korea, crashed while landing at San Francisco International Airport, killing three passengers and injuring 181.
In 2016, Philando Castile, a Black elementary school cafeteria worker, was killed during a traffic stop in the St. Paul suburb of Falcon Heights by Officer Jeronimo Yanez. (Yanez was later acquitted on a charge of second-degree manslaughter.)
In 2018, six followers of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult were hanged along with its leader, Shoko Asahara; they had been convicted of crimes including a 1995 sarin gas attack that killed 13 people and made thousands of others sick on the Tokyo subway system.
In 2020, the Trump administration formally notified the United Nations of its withdrawal from the World Health Organization; President Donald Trump had criticized the WHO’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. (The pullout was later halted by President Joseph Biden’s administration.)
On July 7, 1981, President Ronald Reagan announced he was nominating Arizona Judge Sandra Day O’Connor to become the first female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Also on this date:
In 1865, four people were hanged in Washington, D.C. for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln: Lewis Powell, David Herold, George Atzerodt and Mary Surratt, the first woman to be executed by the federal government.
In 1898, President William McKinley signed the Newlands Resolution, approving the annexation of the Republic of Hawaii.
In 1930, construction began on Boulder Dam (known today as Hoover Dam).
In 1976, the United States Military Academy at West Point included female cadets for the first time as 119 women joined the Class of 1980.
In 1990, the first “Three Tenors” concert took place as opera stars Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras performed amid the brick ruins of Rome’s Baths of Caracalla on the eve of the FIFA World Cup final.
In 2005, terrorist bombings in three Underground stations and a double-decker bus killed 52 people and four bombers in the worst attack on London since World War II.
In 2010, Los Angeles police arrested and charged Lonnie Franklin Jr. in the city’s “Grim Sleeper” serial killings. (Franklin, who was sentenced to death for the killings of nine women and a teenage girl, died in prison in March 2020 at the age of 67.)
In 2013, Andy Murray became the first British man in 77 years to win the Wimbledon title, beating Novak Djokovic in the final.
In 2016, Micah Johnson, a Black Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, opened fire on Dallas police, killing five officers in an act of vengeance for the fatal police shootings of Black men; the attack ended with Johnson being killed by a bomb delivered by a police robot.
In 2021, a squad of gunmen assassinated Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and wounded his wife in an overnight raid on their home.
Today’s Birthdays: Musician-conductor Doc Severinsen is 97. Former Beatle Ringo Starr is 84. World Golf Hall of Famer Tony Jacklin is 80. Actor Joe Spano is 78. Actor Shelley Duvall is 75. Actor Roz Ryan is 73. Actor Billy Campbell is 65. Basketball Hall of Famer Ralph Sampson is 64. Singer-songwriter Vonda Shepard is 61. Actor-comedian Jim Gaffigan is 58. Actor Amy Carlson is 56. Actor Jorja Fox is 56. Actor Robin Weigert is 54. Basketball Hall of Famer Lisa Leslie is 52. Actor Kirsten Vangsness (“Criminal Minds”) is 52. Actor Berenice Bejo (BEH’-ruh-nees BAY’-hoh) (Film: “The Artist”) is 48. Actor Hamish Linklater is 48. Olympic figure skating medalist and current US Ambassador to Belize Michelle Kwan is 44. Guitarist Synyster Gates (Avenged Sevenfold) is 43. Pop singer Ally Brooke (Fifth Harmony) (TV: “The X Factor”) is 31. Pop musician Ashton Irwin (5 Seconds to Summer) is 30. Country singer Maddie Font (Maddie and Tae) is 29.
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