Today is Monday, July 9, the 190th day of 2018. There are 175 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On July 9, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was read aloud to Gen. George Washington’s troops in New York.
On this date:
In 1540, England’s King Henry VIII had his 6-month-old marriage to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, annulled.
In 1816, Argentina declared independence from Spain.
In 1850, the 12th president of the United States, Zachary Taylor, died after serving only 16 months of his term. (He was succeeded by Millard Fillmore.)
In 1918, 101 people were killed in a train collision in Nashville, Tennessee. The Distinguished Service Cross was established by an Act of Congress.
In 1937, a fire at 20th Century Fox’s film storage facility in Little Ferry, New Jersey, destroyed most of the studio’s silent films.
In 1951, President Harry S. Truman asked Congress to formally end the state of war between the United States and Germany. (An official end to the state of war was declared in October 1951.)
In 1962, pop artist Andy Warhol’s exhibit of 32 paintings of Campbell’s soup cans opened at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles.
In 1974, former U.S. Chief Justice Earl Warren died in Washington at age 83.
In 1982, Pan Am Flight 759, a Boeing 727, crashed in Kenner, Louisiana, shortly after takeoff from New Orleans International Airport, killing all 145 people aboard and eight people on the ground.
In 1986, the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography released the final draft of its report, which linked hard-core porn to sex crimes.
In 1995, Jerry Garcia performed for the final time as frontman of the Grateful Dead during a concert at Chicago’s Soldier Field (Garcia died a month later).
In 2001, a divided court in Chile ruled that Gen. Augusto Pinochet could not be tried on human rights charges because of his deteriorating health and mental condition, a ruling that effectively brought the 85-year-old former dictator’s legal troubles to an end.
