0118 – Hadrian, Rome’s new emperor, made his entry into the city.
0455 – Avitus, the Roman military commander in Gaul, became Emperor of the West.
1540 – England’s King Henry VIII had his 6-month-old marriage to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, annulled.
1609 – In a letter to the crown, the emperor Rudolf II granted Bohemia freedom of worship.
1755 – General Edward Braddock was mortally wounded when French and Indian troops ambushed his force of British regulars and colonial militia. He died on July 13.
1776 – The American Declaration of Independence was read aloud to Gen. George Washington’s troops in New York.
1789 – In Versailles, the French National Assembly declared itself the Constituent Assembly and began to prepare a French constitution.
1790 – The Swedish navy captured one third of the Russian fleet at the naval battle of Svensksund in the Baltic Sea.
1816 – Argentina declared independence from Spain.
1868 – The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The amendment was designed to grant citizenship to and protect the civil liberties of recently freed slaves. It did this by prohibiting states from denying or abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, depriving any person of his life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denying to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
1877 – Alexander Graham Bell, Gardiner Greene Hubbard, Thomas Sanders and Thomas Watson formed the Bell Telephone Company.
1900 – The Commonwealth of Australia was established by an act of the British Parliament, uniting the separate colonies under a federal government.
1943 – American and British forces made an amphibious landing on Sicily.
1947 – The engagement of Britain’s Princess Elizabeth to Lt. Philip Mountbatten was announced.
1951 – U.S. President Truman asked Congress to formally end the state of war between the United States and Germany.
1953 – New York Airways began the first commuter passenger service by helicopter.
1971 – The United States turned over complete responsibility of the Demilitarized Zone to South Vietnamese units.
2015 – The South Carolina House of Representatives approved taking down the Confederate flag from the Capitol grounds. The flag was removed the next day and taken to a state military museum.