12 History Lessons + 5 Births & 6 Deaths for July 8, 2025
Today’s History:
- 1497 – Vasco da Gama sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on his first voyage to India.
- 1776 – The Liberty Bell rings in Philadelphia to mark the public reading of the Declaration of Independence.
- 1835 – The Liberty Bell cracks (again) while being rung to commemorate Chief Justice John Marshall’s death.
- 1853 – Commodore Matthew Perry arrives in Edo Bay, Japan, initiating the opening of Japan to the West.
- 1889 – The Wall Street Journal is first published.
- 1947 – Reports of a UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico, surface and spark decades of conspiracy theories.
- 1951 – Paris celebrates its 2,000th birthday.
- 1969 – U.S. troops begin withdrawing from Vietnam following President Nixon’s announcement of “Vietnamization.”
- 1981 – The Solar Challenger becomes the first solar-powered aircraft to cross the English Channel.
- 1994 – Kim Jong-il begins to assume leadership of North Korea upon the death of his father, Kim Il-sung.
- 2011 – The final mission of NASA’s space shuttle program, STS-135, is launched.
- 2022 – Shinzo Abe, Japan’s former Prime Minister, is assassinated during a campaign speech.
Today’s Birthdays:
- 1951 – Anjelica Huston, actress and director (The Addams Family, Prizzi’s Honor) (74)
- 1958 – Kevin Bacon, actor (Footloose, Mystic River) (67)
- 1961 – Toby Keith, country music singer-songwriter (64)
- 1977 – Milo Ventimiglia, actor (This Is Us) (48)
- 1982 – Sophia Bush, actress (One Tree Hill) (43)
Today’s Deaths:
- 1695 – Christiaan Huygens, Dutch physicist, astronomer, and mathematician (66)
- 1822 – Percy Bysshe Shelley, English Romantic poet (Ozymandias) (29)
- 1889 – Joseph Chamberlain, British politician and reformer (52)
- 1979 – Shin’ichirō Tomonaga, Japanese physicist and Nobel Laureate (73)
- 1994 – Kim Il-sung, founding leader of North Korea (82)
- 2022 – Shinzo Abe, longest-serving Prime Minister of Japan (67)
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