1054 – Brightest known supernova SN 1054 (creates the Crab Nebula) 1st reported by Chinese astronomers
1610 – Battle of Klushino: King Sigismund III’s Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth army defeats Russia and Sweden
1754 – George Washington gives Fort Necessity to France
1879 – Africaner Union forms by Rev SJ du Toit at Cape colony
1892 – Western Samoa changes the International Date Line, so that year there were 367 days in this country, with two occurrences of Monday, July 4
1901 – William Howard Taft, former Federal judge, is installed as first governor-general of the Philippines and declares amnesty for all insurgents who take an oath of allegiance
1903 – Pacific Cable (San Francisco, Hawaii, Guam, Philippines) opens, President Theodore Roosevelt sends a message
1917 – Troops of the Russian Provisional Government open fire on protesters in Petrograd during the ‘July Days’ of unrest
1973 – Alan Ayckbourn’s “Absurd Person Singular,” premieres in London
2019 – Largest earthquake in California in 20 years 6.4 magnitude near Ridgecrest