| On this date in: |
| 1776 | The Continental Congress passed a resolution that "these United Colonies are, and of right, ought to be, Free and Independent States." |
| 1881 | President James A. Garfield was fatally shot by Charles J. Guiteau at the Washington railroad station; he died on Sept. 19. |
| 1890 | Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act. |
| 1926 | The U.S. Army Air Corps was created. |
| 1932 | Democrats nominated New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt for president at their convention in Chicago. |
| 1937 | Aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first around-the-world flight at the equator. They were never found. |
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| 1947 | An object that the Army Air Force later said was a weather balloon crashed near Roswell, N.M. Eyewitness accounts gave rise to speculation it might have been an alien spacecraft. |
| 1961 | Author Ernest Hemingway, 61, shot himself to death at his home in Ketchum, Idaho. |
| 1964 | President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law a sweeping civil rights bill.
 | President Lyndon B. Johnson |
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| 1976 | The Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was not inherently cruel or unusual. |
| 1997 | Actor James Stewart died at age 89. |
| 2001 | Robert Tools received the world's first self-contained artificial heart in Louisville, Ky. (He lived 151 days with the device.) |
| 2002 | American Steve Fossett became the first person to fly a balloon solo around the world. |
| 2007 | President George W. Bush commuted the sentence of former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, sparing him from a two-and-half-year prison term in the CIA leak case. |
| 2007 | Opera singer Beverly Sills died at age 78. |
