On July 9, 1755, British Gen. Edward Braddock was fatally wounded during the French and Indian War in a disastrous attack on Ft. Duquesne near present-day Pittsburgh. (One of the survivors was George Washington, an aide to Braddock.)
In 1816 Argentina declared independence from Spain.
In 1850 President Zachary Taylor died in the White House after having served only 16 months. He was 65.
In 1893 Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, a pioneering black surgeon, performed the first successful suture of a human heart and pericardium in Provident Hospital in Chicago.
In 1943 the Allies invaded Sicily in World War II.
In 1947 the engagement of Britain’s Princess Elizabeth to Lt. Philip Mountbatten was announced in London.
In 1951 President Harry Truman asked Congress to formally end the state of war that still existed between the U.S. and Germany six years after World War II.
In 1978 Israel rejected an Egyptian peace plan calling for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In 1982 a Pan American jetliner crashed after taking off from New Orleans, killing all 146 people aboard and eight on the ground in suburban Kenner, La.
In 1989 President George Bush arrived in Warsaw for a visit that included an address to the Polish National Assembly and a meeting with Solidarity founder Lech Walesa.
In 1991 the International Olympic Committee re-admitted South Africa.
In 1993 leaders of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Muslim-led government rejected a plan to divide the country into three ethnically separate republics.
In 1997 a strong earthquake killed 70 people and injured more than 450 along Venezuela’s Caribbean coast.
