Happy Independence day Day to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
1666: The Great Fire of London, which devastates the city, begins.
1789: The Treasury Department, headed by Alexander Hamilton, is created in New York City.
1792: Verdun, France, surrenders to the Prussian Army.
1798: The Maltese people revolt against the French occupation, forcing the French troops to take refuge in the citadel of Valletta in Malta.
1870: Napoleon III capitulates to the Prussians at Sedan, France.
1885: In Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, 28 Chinese laborers are killed and hundreds more chased out of town by striking coal miners.
1898: Sir Herbert Kitchener leads the British to victory over the Mahdists at Omdurman and takes Khartoum.
1910: Alice Stebbins Wells is admitted to the Los Angeles Police Force as the first woman police officer to receive an appointment based on a civil service exam.
1945: Vietnam declares its independence and Nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh proclaims himself its first president.
1945: Japan signs the document of surrender aboard the USS Missouri, ending World War II
1956: Tennessee National Guardsmen halt rioters protesting the admission of 12 African-Americans to schools in Clinton (The Clinton Desegregation Crisis).
1963: The US gets its first half-hour TV weeknight national news broadcast when CBS Evening News expanded from 15 to 30 minutes.
1970: NASA cancels two planned missions to the moon.
1975: Joseph W. Hatcher of Tallahassee, Florida, becomes the state’s first African- American supreme court justice since Reconstruction.
1992: The US and Russia agree to a joint venture to build a space station
1996: The Philippine government and Muslim rebels sign a pact, formally ending a 26-year long insurgency.
1998: Jean Paul Akayesu, former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, found guilty of nine counts of genocide by the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
By Wycliffe Andabwa