0992: Death of Conan I of Brittany

1095: Death of St. Ladislaus I, King of Hungary

1352: Zug and Aeusser Amt join the Swiss Confederation

1497: Execution of Myghal an Gof

1519: Disputation of Leipzig

1574: Death of Giorgio Vasari, painter and writer

1638: Execution of Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Istanbul

1652: New Amsterdam (now New York City) imposes the first speed limit in the U.S., specifying that it is illegal for traffic within the city limits to proceed at a gallop.

1776: Thomas Hickey, one of George Washington's guards, went into the history books for all the wrong reasons. He was convicted of plotting to deliver George Washington to the British and became the first person to be executed by the army of the U.S.

1787: Edward Gibbon completed "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."

1801: British forces captured Cairo and the French began withdrawing from Egypt in one of the Napoleonic Wars.

1844: Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois.

1847: The first telegraph wire links were established between New York City and Boston.

1884: Lawrence Corcoran pitched his third no-hit baseball game this day, leading Chicago to a 6-0 win over Providence. Corcoran set a baseball record for no-hitters for the feat.

1885: Chichester Bell and Charles S. Tainter applied for a patent for the gramophone. The patent was granted on May 4, 1886.

1950: President Truman ordered U.S. naval and air forces to help repel the North Korean invasion of South Korea.

1893: The New York stock market crashed.

1941: The BBC began using the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth as a morale-boosting motif for listeners in the parts of Europe that had been overrun by the Nazis. In Morse Code, "dit-dit-dit dahhh" stands for the letter "V" and "V" stood for "Victory."

1942: The FBI announced the capture of eight Nazi saboteurs who had been put ashore from a submarine on New York's Long Island.

1944: During World War Two, American forces completed their capture of the French port of Cherbourg from the Germans.

1944: "Bathing Beauty", the first film where Esther Williams swam, opened at the Astor.

1948: George Templeton Strong, Junior, died in Switzerland at the age of 92. Strong had been a promising American composer but gave up music to paint, and gave up America to live in Europe. Strong felt America was insufficiently cultured.

1949: The Communist composer Alan Bush was present for the premiere of his symphony on the story of Robin Hood. It was played in Nottingham.

1950: President Truman ordered the Air Force and Navy into the Korean conflict following a call from the United Nations Security Council for member nations to help South Korea repel an invasion from the North.

1955: The nation's first automobile seat belt legislation is enacted in Illinois.

1955: The first of the "Wide Wide World" shows was broadcast on NBC-TV. Dave Garroway of the "Today" show was the program host.

1957: More than 500 people were killed when Hurricane "Audrey" slammed through coastal Louisiana and Texas.

1959: The play, "West Side Story", with music by Leonard Bernstein, closed after 734 performances on Broadway. The show remains one of the brightest highlights in the history of the Great White Way.

1964: R.C., "People" by Barbra Streisand peaked at #5 on the pop singles chart.

1964: Ernest Borgnine and Ethel Merman were married. The couple broke up 38 days later.

1966: "Dark Shadows", TV Daytime Sci-Fi Soap; debut on ABC.

1969: Patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, clashed with police in an incident considered the birth of the homosexual rights movement.

1973: Former White House counsel John W. Dean told the Senate Watergate Committee about an "enemies list" kept by the Nixon White House.

1975: Sonny and Cher (Bono) called it quits as husband and wife. They were divorced soon after their CBS-TV variety show was canceled.

1980: President Carter signed legislation reviving draft registration.

1985: The legendary Route 66, which originally stretched from Chicago to Santa Monica, California, passed into history as officials decertified the road.

1987: The White House announced that a final laboratory analysis of two polyps removed from President Reagan's colon showed they were benign.

1989: President Bush, criticizing a Supreme Court decision upholding desecration of the American flag as a form of political protest, called for a constitutional amendment to protect the Stars and Stripes.

1990: NASA announced that a flaw in the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope was preventing the instrument from achieving optimum focus.

1991: Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black to sit on the nation's highest court, announced his retirement. 

1991: The Supreme Court ruled that juries considering life or death for convicted murderers may take into account the victim's character and the suffering of relatives. 

1992: Authorities found the body of kidnapped Exxon executive Sidney J. Reso buried in a makeshift grave in Bass River State Park in New Jersey. (Arthur and Irene Seale were later convicted and sentenced to prison.)

1993: Iraqis pulled their dead from the rubble of buildings wrecked by US missiles during an early morning raid ordered by President Clinton in reprisal for a reputed assassination plot against former President Bush.

1993: Actress Julia Roberts and singer Lyle Lovett were wed in Marion, Indiana. (The marriage ended in divorce.)

1994: Kenny Lofton is named "Player of the Week", becoming the third Indian to be named in consecutive weeks.

1994: President Clinton replaced White House chief of staff Mack McLarty with budget director Leon Panetta.

1994: U.S. Coast Guard cutters intercepted 1,330 Haitian boat people on the high seas in one of the busiest single days since refugees began leaving Haiti in droves following a 1991 military coup

1995: Former WMMS engineer William Alford is sentenced to 10 days and a $1,000 fine for cutting the cable of the satellite feed during Howard Stern's broadcast from the Cleveland Flats in 1994.

1995: The space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on a historic flight to link up with Russia's space station Mir and bring home American astronaut Norman Thagard.

1995: The San Francisco Chronicle received a message from the Unabomber threatening to blow up a plane by the July 4 weekend (the Unabomber later called the threat a prank).

1996: President Clinton and other Group of Seven leaders meeting in Lyon, France, pledged solidarity against terrorism following a truck bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans.

1996: A Dallas police officer was charged with trying to hire a hit man to kill football star Michael Irvin. (Johnnie Hernandez later pleaded guilty to solicitation of capital murder.)

1997: The Supreme Court threw out a key part of the Brady gun-control law, saying the federal government could not make local police decide whether people are fit to buy handguns. However, the court left intact the five-day waiting period for gun purchases.

1998: An earthquake in Ceyhan, Turkey, killed 144 people.

1998: During a joint news conference beamed live to hundreds of millions of homes across China, President Clinton and President Jiang Zemin offered an uncensored airing of differences on human rights, freedom, trade and Tibet. 

1999: George Papadopoulos, the head of Greece's 1967-74 military dictatorship, died of cancer in Athens at age 80.

1999: The Seattle Mariners beat the Texas Rangers 5-2 in the final game at the Kingdome.

1999: Juli Inkster won the LPGA Championship, becoming the second woman to win the modern career Grand Slam (the first was Pat Bradley).

2000: House Republicans cut a deal to allow direct sales of U-S food to Cuba for the first time in four decades. 

2000: President Robert Mugabe's ruling party was assured a majority in Zimbabwe's new parliament despite historic gains by the opposition.