July 5
1921
Chicago White Sox players, including stars Shoeless Joe Jackson, Buck Weaver and Eddie Cicotte, are accused of throwing the 1919 World Series. The White Sox, who were heavily favored at the start of the World Series, had been seriously underpaid and mistreated by owner Charles Comiskey. The conspiracy to fix the games was concocted by a gambling syndicate preying on the players' discontent. The scandal came to light when the players openly complained after not being paid. The ensuing publicized trial against the players was actually just for show as the players had agreed not to denigrate major league baseball or Comiskey in return for an acquittal. However, the new commissioner of baseball permanently barred the players from professional baseball.
1978
To protest inaccessibility on the city’s bus system, 19 disabled activists in wheelchairs known as the "Gang of 19" occupied a Denver intersection. Two Regional Transportation District (RTD) buses were surrounded and unable to move for 24 hours. At the time, very few Denver buses were wheelchair accessible. Atlantis, a group dedicated to providing free, individualized care to those in need, recognized the importance of challenging the status quo and did so via an offshoot, ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today). Led by Presbyterian minister Wade Blank, it was ADAPT members who staged the protest, disrupting downtown traffic during rush hour and refusing to budge until RTD agreed to install lifts in at least a third of its fleet.
1989
Seinfeld, created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, aired its pilot episode on NBC. Over nine seasons and 180 episodes, it starred Seinfeld as a fictionalized version of himself and focused on his personal life with three of his friends: best friend George Constanza (Jason Alexander), former girlfriend Elane Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and his neighbor from across the hall, Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards). Set mostly in an apartment building in Manhattan's Upper West Side in New York City, it has been described as "a show about nothing", often focusing on the minutiae of daily life. Seinfeld is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential sitcoms of all time. In 2013, the Writers Guild of America voted it the No. 2 Best-Written TV Series of All Time (second to The Sopranos).
July 6
1957
Althea Gibson claimed the women's singles tennis title at Wimbledon and became the first African American to win a championship at London's All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. After winning Wimbledon and the U.S. Open again in 1958, Gibson retired from amateur tennis. In 1960, she toured with the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, playing exhibition tennis matches before their games. In 1964, Gibson joined the Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour, the first Black woman to do so. The trailblazing athlete played pro golf until 1971, the same year in which she was voted into the National Lawn Tennis Association Hall of Fame.
1976
In Annapolis, Maryland, the United States Naval Academy admitted women for the first time. On Oct. 7, 1975, President Gerald Ford signed legislation permitting women to enter the military academies. With male chauvinism and bias working against them in addition to the mental and physical challenges of military training, the women had to work hard to prove themselves — which they quickly did, nailing academics at a higher rate than their male counterparts and slowly earning the respect of their brothers in arms. 55 women from that first class graduated, paving the way for all female cadets, who now comprise more than a quarter of the student body.
1994
The movie Forrest Gump opened in U.S. theaters. A huge box-office success, the film starred Tom Hanks in the title role of Forrest, a good-hearted man with a low I.Q. who winds up at the center of key cultural and historical events of the second half of the 20th century. Forrest Gump received 13 Academy Award nominations and took home six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Hanks) and Best Director (Robert Zemeckis). The film also won an Oscar for its then-cutting-edge computer-generated imagery (CGI) special effects, which incorporated Forrest Gump into existing news footage with famous world figures including JFK, John Lennon and Richard Nixon.
July 7
1930
Construction of the Hoover Dam began. Over the next five years, a total of 21,000 men would work ceaselessly to produce what would be the largest dam of its time, as well as one of the largest manmade structures in the world. Once preparations were made, the Hoover Dam’s construction sprinted forward: The contractors finished their work two years ahead of schedule and millions of dollars under budget. Today, the Hoover Dam generates enough energy each year to serve over a million people, and stands, in Hoover Dam artist Oskar Hansen’s words, as “a monument to collective genius exerting itself in community efforts around a common need or ideal.”
1981
President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor, an Arizona court of appeals judge, to be the first woman Supreme Court justice in U.S. history. On September 21st, the Senate unanimously approved her appointment to the nation's highest court. O'Connor emerged as a moderate and pragmatic conservative. On social issues, she often voted with liberal justices, and in several cases she upheld abortion rights. During her time on the bench, she was known for her dispassionate and carefully researched opinions and was regarded as a prominent justice because of her tendency to moderate the sharply divided Supreme Court. O’Connor announced her retirement from the Supreme Court on July 1, 2005.
2019
After a dominating tournament showing, the U.S. women's national team brought home a record fourth FIFA World Cup title - its second in a row. The team set a women’s World Cup record with 26 goals and 12 straight wins, tying Germany as the only teams to score repeat championships. With four World Cup wins—in 1991, 1999, 2015 and 2019—the U.S. is the only team to have won more than two titles. At the end of the final, fans chanted “Equal pay!” in support of an ongoing gender discrimination lawsuit by players Morgan, Rapinoe, Carli Lloyd and Becky Sauerbrunn against the U.S. Soccer Federation.
July 8
1776
A 2,000-pound copper-and-tine bell now know as the "LibertyBell" rang out from the tower of the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, summoning citizens to the first public reading of he Declaration of Independence. Four days earlier, the historic document had been adopted by delegates to the Continental Congress, but the bell did not ring to announce the issuing of the document until the Declaration of Independence returned from the printer on July 8.
1853
Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, representing the U.S. government, sailed into Tokyo Bay, Japan, with a squadron of four vessels. For a time, Japanese officials refused to speak with Perry, but under threat of attack by the superior American ships they accepted letters from President Millard Fillmore, making the United States the first Western nation to establish relations with Japan since it had been declared closed to foreigners two centuries before. Only the Dutch and the Chinese were allowed to continue trade with Japan after 1639, but this trade was restricted and confined to the island of Dejima at Nagasaki.
1950
General Douglas Macarthur was appointed supreme commander of the U.S.-led U.N. forces sent to aid South Korea after being invaded by the North. In September, he organized a risky but highly successful landing at Inchon, and by October North Korean forces had been driven back across the 38th parallel. When China intervened and forced U.N. forces into a desperate retreat, MacArthur pressed for permission to bomb China. President Truman, fearing the Cold war implications of an expanded war in the Far East, refused. MacArthur then publicly threatened to escalate hostilities with China in defiance of Truman’s stated war policy, leading Truman to fire him on April 11, 1951.
July 9
1944
US troops secured Saipan after three weeks of fighting during the Battle of Saipan. Known as the Pacific D-Day, the battle was launched nine days after Operation Overlord in Europe. The loss of Saipan, with the deaths of at least 29,000 troops and heavy civilian casualties, precipitated the resignation of Prime Minister of Japan Tōjō Hideki and left the Japanese archipelago within the range of US Army Air Forces B-29 bombers. Four months after capture, more than 100 B-29s from Saipan's Isley Field were regularly attacking the Philippines, the Ryukyu Islands and the Japanese mainland. In response, Japanese aircraft attacked Saipan and Tinian on several occasions between November 1944 and January 1945. The U.S. capture of Iwo Jima (19 February – 26 March 1945) ended further Japanese air attacks.
1947
In a ceremony held at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, General Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Florence Blanchfield to be a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, making her the first woman in U.S. history to hold permanent military rank. A member of the Army Nurse Corps since 1917, Blanchfield secured her commission following the passage of the Army-Navy Nurse Act of 1947. Blanchfield served as superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps during WWII and was instrumental in securing passage of the Army-Navy Nurse Act, which was advocated by Representative Frances Payne Bolton. In 1951, Blanchfield received the Florence Nightingale Award from the International Red Cross. In 1978, a U.S. Army hospital in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was named in her honor.
1962
Bob Dylan recorded "Blowin' in The Wind," the eloquent protest song that would make him a star and go on to be one of the top 20 songs of all time. Dylan’s recording of “Blowin’ In The Wind” would first be released nearly a full year later, on his breakthrough album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. This was not the version of the song that most people would first hear, however. That honor went to the cover version by Peter, Paul and Mary—a version that not only became a smash hit on the pop charts, but also transformed what Dylan would later call “just another song” into the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement.
July 10
1890
President Benjamin Harrison signed Wyoming’s statehood bill, making Wyoming the 44th state. Carved from sections of Dakota, Utah, and Idaho territories, Wyoming Territory came into existence by act of Congress on July 25, 1868. Wyoming is known as the "Equality State" because of the rights women have traditionally enjoyed here. In 1869, Wyoming's territorial legislature became the first government in the world to grant "female suffrage" by enacting a bill granting Wyoming women the right to vote. Less than three months later, the "Mother of Women Suffrage in Wyoming"-Ester Hobart Morris-became the first woman ever to be appointed a justice of the peace. Wyoming women were also the first in the nation to serve on juries and hold public office.
1925
The Scopes Monkey Trial, one of the most famous trials in US history, began with John Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law. The law made it a misdemeanor to “teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible." William Jennings Bran, former Democratic presidential candidate and a fundamentalist hero headed the prosecution while the great attorney Clarence Darrow agreed to join the ACLU in the defense. Scopes ended up losing the case and was charged a $100 fine, though the verdict was later overturned on a technicality. The case marked a turning point in the way evolution was taught in schools and more widely acknowledged in the U.S.
1962
The United States Patent Office issues Volvo's Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin a patent for his three-point automobile safety belt. At the time, safety-belt use in automobiles was limited mostly to race car drivers; the traditional two-point belt, which fastened in a buckle over the abdomen, had been known to cause severe internal injuries in the event of a high-speed crash. Consisting of two straps that joined at the hip level and fastened into a single anchor point, the three-point belt significantly reduced injuries by effectively holding both the upper and lower body and reducing the impact of the swift deceleration that occurred in a crash. Volvo released the new seat belt design to other car manufacturers, and it quickly became standard worldwide.
July 11
1804
In one of the most famous duels in American history, Vice President Aaron Burr fatally shot his long-time political antagonist Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, a leading Federalist and the chief architect of America’s political economy, died the following day. Burr came from an elite New Jersey family while Hamilton was a poor Caribbean immigrant. The duel resulted from Hamilton's thrashing of Burr's character during the election for New York Governor, which Burr lost, and Burr wanting to restore his honor. Though charged with murder, Burr was immune from prosecution due to being the Vice President.
1914
In his major league debut, George Herman “Babe” Ruth pitched seven strong innings to lead the Boston Red Sox over the Cleveland Indians, 4-2. To the great dismay of Boston fans, Ruth’s contract was sold to the New York Yankees before the 1920 season by Red Sox owner Harry Frazee. Ruth switched to the outfield with the Yankees and hit more home runs than the entire Red Sox team in 10 of the next 12 seasons. After getting rid of Ruth, the Red Sox did not win a World Series until 2004, an 85-year drought known to Red Sox fans as “the Curse of the Bambino.” Babe Ruth’s 1914 Baltimore News pre-rookie card sold for just over $6 million in 2021, making it the most expensive card purchase in history.
1960
34-year-old novelist Nelle Harper Lee published her first novel, To Kill a Mockingbirf. Set in Maycomb, Alabama, the novel is populated with indelible characters, including the book's tomboy narrator, Jean Louise Finch (known as “Scout”), the mysterious recluse Boo Radley and Scout’s father, Atticus Finch, an upstanding lawyer who defends a Black man accused of raping a white woman. Now a staple of junior high and high school classrooms and the subject of numerous censorship efforts, it offers a vivid depiction of life in the Jim Crow South during the Great Depression. To Kill a Mockingbird became an immediate success, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961 and eventually selling more than 40 million copies worldwide.