July 4

Guy of Lusignan marched the kingdom’s whole army away from its water at Sephoria. Surrounded, thirsty and choked by the smoke of grass fires, it was destroyed. King Guy and the True Cross were taken; Saladin killed Reynald of Châtillon himself and had the captured Templars and Hospitallers executed.

The Declaration of IndependenceDeclaration of Independence

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”: Thomas Jefferson’s draft, edited by a committee that included Franklin, put Locke’s case for government by consent into a founding act. Its author owned more than a hundred slaves.

The Declaration of Independence is adoptedDeclaration of Independence

Congress cut about a quarter of Jefferson’s draft, including a passage blaming George III for the slave trade. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” was written by a man who enslaved more than a hundred people.

A thunderstorm flooded a drift at Silkstone, near Barnsley, and 26 children drowned, the youngest aged seven; eleven of them were girls. The outcry led to a royal commission on children in the mines.

After a winter of failed canals and bayou expeditions, Grant marched down the west bank, crossed below the fortress city, cut loose from his supply line and won five battles in under three weeks before sealing Vicksburg in.

Two assaults failed, so Grant dug in. Civilians sheltered in caves dug into the bluffs, and the garrison ended on quarter rations and mule meat. 19,233 casualties (NPS).

On Independence Day Pemberton surrendered the city and about 29,500 men. Port Hudson followed on 9 July, and the Union held the whole river. “The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea,” Lincoln wrote.

A two-foot-gauge line climbs about 2,000 metres from the plains at Siliguri to the hill station, with loops and zigzags instead of tunnels. It is now part of the Mountain Railways of India World Heritage Site.

The agriculture minister went out to calm the crowd and was bundled into a car. A worker shook his fist at him: “Take power, you son of a bitch, when it’s given to you!” Trotsky talked the crowd into letting him go.

Of “aplastic pernicious anaemia”, her doctors said; her bone marrow had probably been injured by a long accumulation of radiation. She was sixty-six and had never quite admitted that radium made her ill. Two days later she was buried at Sceaux, on top of Pierre’s coffin. Radium has a half-life of…

She died of aplastic anaemia at a sanatorium in the Alps, after decades of handling radium bare-handed. Her notebooks are still radioactive and are kept in lead-lined boxes.

One of the Tour’s first three summit finishes, with Sestriere and the Puy de Dôme. Fausto Coppi won all three, and the Tour by 28 minutes.

Hungary had not lost in four years and had beaten West Germany 8–3 in the group. They led 2–0 after eight minutes; Helmut Rahn’s winner came six minutes from the end. Rahn schießt – Tor! Tor! Tor! Tor! — Herbert Zimmermann, on West German radio

The first World Cup on television, and the highest-scoring: 5.38 goals a match. Austria beat Switzerland 7–5 in Lausanne, still the most goals in one World Cup match.

Two shows at the Rizal Memorial Stadium drew 80,000 people, the most the Beatles played to in a day. They had not gone to a palace reception given by Imelda Marcos: Epstein had declined, but the papers had said they would come. The next day their security vanished and they were jostled and kicked…

Rick Rubin paired the trio from Hollis, Queens with Steven Tyler and Joe Perry to remake Aerosmith’s 1975 hit. The video, in which the two bands break through a studio wall, played constantly on MTV, and the single reached No. 4 on the Hot 100, the highest a rap record had gone.

Since Pathfinder landed, and Mars Global Surveyor arrived in orbit that September, at least one working spacecraft has always been at Mars: American, European, Indian, Emirati and Chinese orbiters, landers and rovers in overlapping shifts.

It hit Ares Vallis wrapped in airbags and bounced along the ground before rolling to a stop. Two days later Sojourner drove down its ramp, the first wheels on Mars.

A 370 kg copper-laden impactor was put in the path of comet Tempel 1 at about 10 km a second, while the mother ship watched the plume of fine powder it threw up.

The third start in Spain, and the first to open with a team time trial since 1971. Two finishes on Alpe d’Huez; a heatwave shortened two stages.