July 1

1867 --Canada officially became an independent country as the British North America Act came into being.

1863, the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg began.

1898, during the Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt and his "Rough Riders" waged a victorious assault on San Juan Hill in Cuba.

July 2

1578 -- Martin Frobisher discovered Hudson Strait.

1776, the Continental Congress passed a resolution saying that "these United Colonies are, and of right, ought to be, Free and Independent States."

1881, President Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau at the Washington railroad station; Garfield died two months later.

1890, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act.

July 3

1608, the city of Quebec was founded by Samuel de Champlain.

1775, Gen. George Washington took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Mass.

1863, the three-day Civil War Battle of Gettysburg, Penn., ended in a major victory for the North as Confederate troops retreated.

1890, Idaho became the 43rd state of the Union.

1898, the U.S. Navy defeated a Spanish fleet in the harbor at Santiago, Cuba, during the Spanish-American War.

July 4

1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.

1802, the U.S. Military Academy officially opened at West Point, New York.

1831, the fifth president of the United States, James Monroe, died in New York.

1845, Henry David Thoreau began his two-year experiment in simpler living at Walden Pond, near Concord, Mass.

1872, the 30th president of the United States, Calvin Coolidge, was born in Plymouth, Vt.

July 5

1801, American naval hero David G. Farragut was born in Knoxville, Tenn.

1811, Venezuela became the first South American country to declare independence from Spain.

1830, the French occupied the North African city of Algiers.

1865, William Booth founded the Salvation Army in London.

July 6

1535, Sir Thomas More was executed. More, once King Henry VIII's chief minister and friend, had refused to take the oath of supremacy accepting the English monarch as head of the church. A Roman Catholic martyr, he was beatified in 1886 and canonized in 1935.

1777, during the American Revolution, British forces captured Fort Ticonderoga.

1885, French scientist Louis Pasteur successfully tested an anti-rabies vaccine on a boy who had been bitten by an infected dog.

July 7

1865, four people were hanged in Washington, D.C., for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Lincoln.

1846, U.S. annexation of California was proclaimed at Monterey after the surrender of a Mexican garrison.

1896, the Democratic national convention opened in Chicago.

1898, the United States annexed Hawaii.

July 8

1663, King Charles II of England granted a charter to Rhode Island.

1776, Col. John Nixon gave the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, in Philadelphia.

1853, an expedition led by Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Yedo Bay, Japan, on a mission to seek diplomatic and trade relations with the Japanese.

1889, The Wall Street Journal was first published.

1891, Warren G. Harding married Florence K. DeWolfe in Marion, Ohio

July 9

1793 -- Upper Canada, now Ontario, prohibited the importation of slaves.

1850, the 12th president of the United States, Zachary Taylor, died after serving only 16 months of his term.

1540, England's King Henry VIII had his six-month marriage to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, annulled.

1776, the Declaration of Independence was read aloud to Gen. George Washington's troops in New York.

1816, Argentina declared independence from Spain.

1896, William Jennings Bryan delivered his famous "cross of gold" speech at the Democratic national convention in Chicago.

July 10

1869 -- A group of prospectors led by Montreal mining engineer Thomas McFarlane discovered a rich vein of galena near Prince Arthur's Landing on Lake Superior which later became the Silver Islet silver mine.

1553, Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed Queen of England. Her father-in-law, Lord Northumberland, persuaded Edward VI to name Lady Jane as his successor. Her reign lasted only nine days before Queen Mary, Edward's older sister, successfully claimed the throne. Lady Jane was imprisoned for treason and then beheaded in 1554.

1850, Vice President Millard Fillmore assumed the presidency, following the death of President Taylor.

In 1890, Wyoming became the 44th state.

July 11

1804, Vice President Aaron Burr mortally wounded former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in a pistol duel near Weehawken, N.J.

1533, Pope Clement VII excommunicated England's King Henry VIII.

1767, John Quincy Adams, who would become the sixth president of the United States, was born in Braintree, Mass.

1798, the U.S. Marine Corps was formally re-established by a congressional act that also created the U.S. Marine Band.

1864, Confederate forces led by Gen. Jubal Early began an abortive invasion of Washington D.C., turning back the next day.

July 12

1812, The American general William Hull invaded Canada from Detroit with 2,500 men -- in the opening campaign of the War of 1812. He expected to be welcomed as a liberator, but was beaten back three times at Duck River and hurried back to Detroit a month later. In August, Hull surrendered at Detroit to Gen. Isaac Brock.

100 B.C., Roman dictator Julius Caesar was born.

1543, England's King Henry VIII married his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr.

1690, Protestant forces led by William of Orange defeated the Roman Catholic army of James II at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland.

1817, naturalist-author Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Mass.

1854, George Eastman, inventor of the Kodak camera, was born in Waterville, N.Y.

1862, Congress authorized the Medal of Honor.

July 13

1787, Congress enacted an ordinance governing the Northwest Territory.

1793, French revolutionary writer Jean Paul Marat was stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday.

1863, deadly rioting against the Civil War military draft erupted in New York City.

1878, the Treaty of Berlin amended the terms of the Treaty of San Stefano, which had ended the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78.

July 14

1881, outlaw William H. Bonney Jr., aka Billy the Kid, was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, N.M.

1789, during the French Revolution, citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille prison and released the seven prisoners inside.

1798, Congress passed the Sedition Act, making it a federal crime to publish false, scandalous or malicious writing about the U.S. government.

1853, Commodore Matthew Perry relayed to Japanese officials a letter from former President Fillmore, requesting trade relations.

July 15

1878 -- The first telephone exchange in the British Empire was opened in Hamilton.

1606, Dutch painter Rembrandt was born in Leiden, Netherlands.

1870, Georgia became the last Confederate state readmitted to the Union.

July 16

1790, the District of Columbia was established as the seat of the U.S. government.

1862, David G. Farragut became the first rear admiral in the U.S. Navy.

July 17

1897, when a steamer ship arrived in San Francisco bearing miners from the Yukon, who carried suitcases and boxes full of gold. Thousands began to book passages north after the miners spread tales of fortunes waiting to be made. The gold had been discovered in August 1896 on a tributary of the Klondike River later named Bonanza Creek. News of a strike in Nome, Ala., ended the stampede in 1898. It's estimated that by then prospectors had spent $50 million reaching the Klondike, about the same amount taken from the diggings in the five years after the first strike.

1821, Spain ceded Florida to the United States.

1898, during the Spanish-American War, Spanish troops in Santiago, Cuba, surrendered to U.S. forces.

1899, actor James Cagney was born in New York City.

July 18

1739, a census put Canada's population at 42,701. Canada has the distinction of completing the first modern-day head-count in an area larger than a city. That occurred in 1666, when the population of New France was recorded at 3,215.

A.D. 64, the Great Fire of Rome began.

1872, Britain introduced the concept of voting by secret ballot.

July 19

1771 Thomas Talbot was born in Malahide, Ireland. Talbot was a colonist who was responsible for the settlement of a large part of southern Ontario. After serving as private secretary to Gov. John Graves Simcoe, Talbot became on official promoter of settlement in Upper Canada. Talbot settled portions of 29 townships along the north shore of Lake Erie. Talbot, who served as a soldier, was a member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. He spent 50 years developing the Talbot Settlement in Upper Canada. After 1825, Talbot's power declined amid a popular spirit of reform and his own eccentricity. Talbot lived alone and isolated in his "castle" and bequeathed his estate largely to his servants.

1884 -- A crowd of about 500 turned out in Prince Albert, N.W.T., to hear Louis Riel speak. The Metis leader had returned earlier that month from political exile in the United States.

1553, 15-year-old Lady Jane Grey was deposed as Queen of England after claiming the crown for nine days. King Henry VIII's daughter Mary was proclaimed queen.

1848, a pioneer women's rights convention convened in Seneca Falls, N.Y.

1870, the Franco-Prussian War began.

July 20

1885, Metis leader Louis Riel, the founder of Manitoba, went on trial. Riel was charged with treason for his role in two Metis rebellions. He refused to plead insanity, as his lawyer suggested, and was convicted. He was hanged on Nov. 16, 1885, in Regina. Born at the Red River Settlement on Oct. 22, 1844, Riel was educated in St. Boniface and studied for the priesthood at the College of Montreal. In 1865 he studied law with Rodolphe Laflamme. He returned to St. Boniface in 1868. A year later the federal government, anticipating the transfer of Red River from the Hudson's Bay Co., appointed William McDougall as lieutenant-governor of the new territory. But the Metis were suspicious of Anglo-Protestant immigrants from Ontario and organized themselves to stop surveys of the region. Riel emerged as a leader of later Metis uprisings.

1871 -- British Columbia joined Confederation. Gold rushes of 1858 and 1860 had brought thousands of settlers to B.C., but the colony was always on the verge of bankruptcy. One condition for joining Canada was the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway within 10 years.

1810, Colombia declared independence from Spain.

1861, the Congress of the Confederate States began holding sessions in Richmond, Va.

1871, British Columbia entered Confederation as a Canadian province.

1881, Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull, a fugitive since the Battle of the Little Big Horn, surrendered to federal troops.

July 21

1796, Gov. John Graves Simcoe and his family left York (later Toronto) for England; he never returned to Upper Canada. Simcoe was the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, appointed in 1791. He had been commander of the Queen's Rangers in the American Revolution. He granted land to American settlers, believing they would become loyal settlers and because they were the main hope for quick economic growth in Upper Canada. Simcoe founded York, intending it to be a temporary capital. He wanted to make the colony an example of the superiority of British institutions. He left Upper Canada partly because of ill health. He died in 1806.

1899, author Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Ill.; poet Hart Crane was born in Garrettsville, Ohio.

1816, Paul Julius Reuter, founder of the British news agency bearing his name, was born in Hesse, Germany.

1831, Belgium became independent as Leopold I was proclaimed King of the Belgians.

1861, the first Battle of Bull Run was fought at Manassas, Va., resulting in a Confederate victory.

July 22

1847 -- The Imperial Act gave Canada control of taxation.

1587, a second English colony -- also fated to vanish under mysterious circumstances -- was established on Roanoke Island off North Carolina.

1796, Cleveland, Ohio was founded by General Moses Cleaveland.

1812, English troops defeated the French at the Battle of Salamanca in Spain.

July 23

1767, the Prince Edward Island land lottery was held in London, England. The Earl of Egmont had asked King George III to grant him Prince Edward Island forever. The earl wanted to build armed castles and moats for himself and about 400 lesser lords. His request was turned down, and instead the land was divided up for colonization among people who had claims for military or other public service.

1885, Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, died in Mount McGregor, N.Y., at age 63.

1829, William Austin Burt of Mount Vernon, Mich., received a patent for his typographer -- a forerunner of the typewriter.

1886, New York saloonkeeper Steve Brodie claimed to have made a daredevil plunge from the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River.

July 24

1783, Latin American revolutionary Simon Bolivar was born in Caracas, Venezuela.

1862, the eighth president of the United States, Martin Van Buren, died in Kinderhook, N.Y.

1866, Tennessee became the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War.

July 25

1845, the English explorer Sir John Franklin disappeared, while on an expedition in the eastern Arctic. He never returned, and after a 12-year search by numerous vessels it was finally learned that his ships had been frozen in west of King William Island. Franklin died June 11, 1847, and his 105 crew members perished while trekking southward.

1866, Ulysses S. Grant was named General of the Army, the first officer to hold the rank.

1593, France's King Henry IV converted from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism.

1868, Congress passed an act creating the Wyoming Territory.

July 26

1758, Louisbourg, the great French citadel on Cape Breton Island, surrendered to the British. The fortress capitulated after an eight-week siege to a British force of 27,000 men and 157 ships. With the surrender, the French were driven from the Maritimes.

1881 -- The Canadian Pacific Railway was completed as far as Winnipeg.

1775, Benjamin Franklin became Postmaster-General.

1788, New York became the 11th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

July 27

1789, Congress established the Department of Foreign Affairs, the forerunner of the Department of State.

1794, French revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre was overthrown and placed under arrest; he was executed the following day.

1861, Union Gen. George B. McClellan was put in command of the Army of the Potomac.

1866, Cyrus W. Field finally succeeded, after two failures, in laying the first underwater telegraph cable between North America and Europe.

July 28

1755, The Council of Nova Scotia decided to deport Acadians, under the pretext that they had refused the oath of allegiance to Britain. Over the next few years most of the Acadians, who were the descendants of French settlers, were rounded up and deported. Others managed to flee to Quebec or hide. It is estimated about one-half of them died during the expulsion.

1750, composer Johann Sebastian Bach died in Leipzig, Germany.

1540, King Henry VIII's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, was executed, the same day Henry married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard.

1794, Maximilien Robespierre, a leading figure of the French Revolution, was sent to the guillotine.

1821, Peru declared its independence from Spain.

1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing due process of law, was declared in effect.

1896, the city of Miami, Fla., was incorporated.

July 29

1890, artist Vincent van Gogh died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Auvers, France.

1900, Italian King Humbert I was assassinated by an anarchist; he was succeeded by his son, Victor Emmanuel III.

July 30

1729, the city of Baltimore was founded.

1792, the French national anthem "La Marseillaise," by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, was first sung in Paris.

1844, the New York Yacht Club was founded.

1864, during the Civil War, Union forces tried to take Petersburg, Va., by exploding a mine under Confederate defense lines; the attack failed.

July 31

1556, St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuit order of Catholic priests and brothers, died in Rome.

1498, during his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus arrived at the island of Trinidad.

1777, the Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old French nobleman, was made a major-general in the American Continental Army.

1875, the 17th president of the United States, Andrew Johnson, died in Carter Station, Tenn., at age 66.