| On this date in: |
| 1810 | Colombia declared independence from Spain. |
| 1861 | The Congress of the Confederate States began holding sessions in Richmond, Va. |
| 1871 | British Columbia joined the 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. |
 |
| AP Photo |
|
| 1917 | The World War I draft lottery began. |
| 1942 | The first detachment of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps began basic training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa. |
| 1944 | Adolf Hitler was only slightly wounded when a bomb planted by would-be assassins exploded at the German leader's Rastenburg headquarters. |
| 1944 | President Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated for an unprecedented fourth term at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. |
| 1951 | Jordan's King Abdullah Ibn Hussein was assassinated in Jerusalem. |
| 1976 | America's Viking 1 robot spacecraft landed on Mars. |
| 1977 | A flash flood hit Johnstown, Pa., killing 80 people and causing $350 million in damage. |
| 1990 | A federal appeals court set aside Oliver North's Iran-Contra convictions. |
| 1993 | White House deputy counsel Vince Foster was found shot to death in a park near Washington, D.C., in an apparent suicide. |
| 1997 | Seven people were arrested after New York City police found scores of deaf Mexicans kept in slave-like conditions and forced to peddle trinkets for smugglers who had brought them to the United States. |
| 1999 | After 38 years at the bottom of the Atlantic, astronaut Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 Mercury capsule was lifted to the surface. |
| 2004 | The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution demanding that Israel tear down the barrier it was building to seal off the West Bank. |
| 2007 | President George W. Bush signed an executive order prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment, including humiliation or denigration of religious beliefs, in the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects. |
