Volume 13 , Issue 27

This Day In History (July 4th)

On this day, July 4th, the United States celebrated its Bicentennial. In 1776, the continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. Go to article.

On This Day, July 4th:

• 1872 - Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the United States, was born. Following his death on Jan. 5, 1933, his obituary appeared in The Times. Go to obituary
• 1802 - The U.S. Military Academy opened at West Point, N.Y.
• 1804 - Author Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Mass.
• 1826 - Death claimed the second and third presidents of the United States: John Adams died at age 90 in Braintree, Mass., while Thomas Jefferson died at 83 at Monticello, his home near Charlottesville, Va.
• 1831 - James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States, died at age 73 in New York City.
• 1845 - American writer Henry David Thoreau began a two-year experiment in simple living at Walden Pond near Concord, Mass.
• 1939 - Baseball player Lou Gehrig, afflicted with a fatal illness, bid a tearful farewell at Yankee Stadium in New York, telling fans, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."
• 1946 - The Philippines became independent.
• 1958 - Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, was appointed auxilliary bishop of Krakow in his native Poland.
• 1966 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act into law.

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