July 6
1785: The dollar was unanimously chosen as the monetary unit for the United States.
1854: The first convention of the U.S. Republican Party was held, in Jackson, Mich.
1885: Louis Pasteur announced that he had perfected the rabies vaccine.
1942: Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in the “Secret Annexe” above her father’s office in an Amsterdam warehouse.
1947: The AK-47 went into production in the Soviet Union.
2017: France announces it will ban petrol and diesel cars by 2040.
July 7
1863: The first military draft in the United States began. Exemptions could be bought for $300.
1898. President William McKinley annexed Hawaii as a territory of the United States.
1954: Elvis Presley made his radio debut when WHBQ Memphis played his first recording for Sun Records, “That’s All Right.”
2017: Tesla Motors produces its first mass-market car, the Model 3.
July 8
1777: Vermont became the first state to abolish slavery.
2011: Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched in the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program.
July 9
1776: George Washington ordered the Declaration of Independence to be read aloud for the first time, to members of the Continental Army in New York.
1811: Explorer David Thompson posted a sign at the confluence of the Columbia and Snake rivers, in now-Washington state, claiming the land for the United Kingdom.
1896: William Jennings Bryan delivered his famous “Cross of Gold” speech advocating gold and silver as the nations’ money standard, at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
1900: Queen Victoria gave Royal Assent to an act creating Australia, thus uniting separate colonies on the continent under one federal government.
1958: Lituya Bay in Alaska was hit by a mega-tsunami. The wave was 1,720 feet high, the largest in recorded history.
1962: Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans exhibition opened at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles.
1981: Donkey Kong, a video game created by Nintendo, was released. The game marked the debut of Nintendo’s future mascot, Mario.
2018: US coffee company Starbucks announces it will stop using plastic straws by 2020, reducing use of more than 1 billion straws a year.
July 10
988: The city of Dublin, Ireland, was founded by Viking invaders.
1913: Death Valley, California, hit 134 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest officially recorded air temperature in the world.
1962: Telstar, the world’s first communications satellite, was launched into orbit.
1997: Scientists in London reported the findings of the DNA analysis of a Neanderthal skeleton that supported the “out of Africa theory” of human evolution, placing an “African Eve” at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
2002: At a Sotheby’s auction, Peter Paul Rubens’ painting The Massacre of the Innocents was sold for £49.5 million ($76.2 million) to Lord Thomson.
2017: NASA’s Juno spacecraft makes closest ever pass over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot at 9,000 kilometers overhead.
2019: Taylor Swift named the world’s highest paid entertainer by Forbes earning $185 million in 2018.
July 11
1735: Dwarf planet Pluto moved inside the orbit of Neptune for the last time until 1979.
1798: The U.S. Marine Corps was re-established. (It had been disbanded after the American Revolutionary War.)
1889: Tijuana, Mexico, was founded.
1893: The first cultured pearl was obtained by Kokichi Mikimoto in Tokyo.
1914: Babe Ruth made his debut in Major League Baseball, with the Boston Red Sox.
1921: Former President William Howard Taft was sworn in as 10th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the only person to hold both offices.
1960: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was first published.
2018: Oldest stone tools outside Africa discovered in Lantian country, western China, estimated 2.12 million years old made by hominins.
2019: Last models of Volkswagen’s Beetle car are produced in Pueblo, Mexico, ending production worldwide after 80 years.
July 12
1973: A fire destroyed the entire sixth floor of the National Personnel Records Center of the United States.
2017: World’s largest iceberg (later christened A68) breaks away from Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica, about 6,000 sq km in length.
2018: World’s longest fingernails cut off; Shridhar Chillal’s nails measured 909.6cm after growing for 66 years.
ON THIS DAY… JULY 6 – JULY 12
July 6- NATIONAL FRIED CHICKEN DAY Fried chicken was an expensive delicacy up until World War II, but thanks to mass production techniques, we’re now able to indulge on the cheap.
July 7- TELL THE TRUTH DAY
Truthfulness and honesty are the
foundations of living with integrity.
NATIONAL VIDEO GAME DAY July 8th
Dust off that old Nintendo and haul your prized collection of games out of the closet.
July 9- NATIONAL SUGAR COOKIE DAY
Originating in the 1700’s in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, sugar cookies were initially referred to as Nazareth Cookies.
July 10- NATIONAL KITTEN DAY
According to the American Humane Society, 95.6 million cats are owned, while 83.3 million households own a dog.
July 11- NATIONAL MOJITO DAY
The mojito ranks among the nation’s favorite cocktails and is traditionally made with white rum, lime juice, sugar, mint, and sparkling
water.
July 12 -PAPER BAG DAY
This day celebrates the humble paper bag, which does so much more than carrying our groceries.