On the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s last attempt at breaking the Union line ends in disastrous failure, bringing the most decisive battle of the American Civil War to an end.

On July 3, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Rivers and Harbors Flood Control Bill, which allocates funds to improve flood-control and water-storage systems across the country. Eisenhower had sent back two earlier bills to Congress, but was pleased with the revisions included in Senate Bill 3910. The bill was introduced in the wake […]

On July 3, 1775, George Washington rides out in front of the American troops gathered at Cambridge common in Massachusetts and draws his sword, formally taking command of the Continental Army. Washington, a prominent Virginia planter and veteran of the French and Indian War, had been appointed commander in chief by the Continental Congress two […]

Clay Allison, eccentric gunfighter and rancher, is believed to have died on July 3, 1887, in a freak wagon accident in Texas. Born around 1840 in Waynesboro, Tennessee, Allison seemed to display odd tendencies from a young age. When the Civil War broke out, he joined the Confederate Army but received a rare medical discharge […]

Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones is found dead of an apparent accidental drowning on July 3, 1969. Two years later to the day, in 1971, Jim Morrison dies of heart failure in a Paris bathtub. For all the highly publicized brushes with the law that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards would have in the late […]

In the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy cruiser Vincennes shoots down an Iranian passenger jet that it mistakes for a hostile Iranian fighter aircraft. Two missiles were fired from the American warship—the aircraft was hit, and all 290 people aboard were killed. The attack came near the end of the Iran-Iraq War, when U.S. vessels […]

Idaho is admitted to the union on July 3, 1890.  Exploration of the North American continent mostly proceeded inward from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and northward from Spanish Mexico. Therefore, the rugged territory that would become Idaho long remained untouched by Spanish, French, British and American trappers and explorers. Even as late as 1805, Idaho […]

On July 3, 1918, with Turkish forces in the final months of fighting against the Allied powers during World War I, Mohammed V, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, dies at the age of 73. Born in 1844 in Constantinople, Mohammed ascended to the throne in 1909 after the forced abdication of his elder brother, Abdul […]

On July 3, 1989, Martha Ann Johnson gives a videotaped confession to police in Clayton County, Georgia, investigating the 1982 asphyxiation death of her 11-year-old daughter Jenny Ann Wright. The case had been re-opened after an investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution raised suspicion around the mother. Three of Johnson’s other children had died between 1977 […]