Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/July 4

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 * 1054 – Chinese astronomers recorded the sudden appearance of a "guest star", later identified as the supernova that created the Crab Nebula.
 * 1643 – First English Civil War: Royalist forces defeated the Parliamentarians at the Battle of Burton Bridge, securing a crossing of the River Trent for a convoy of supplies travelling with Queen Henrietta Maria.
 * 1776 – In Philadelphia, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, announcing that the thirteen American colonies were no longer a part of the British Empire.
 * 1837 – The Grand Junction Railway, the world's first long-distance railway with steam traction, opened between Birmingham and Newton Junction.
 * 1855 – The first edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was published, and it went on to become one of the most important collections of American poetry.
 * 1862 – In a boat on the River Thames from Oxford to Godstow, author Lewis Carroll told Alice Liddell (pictured) and her sisters a story that later formed the basis for his book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
 * 1918 – World War I: Allied forces led by the Australian general John Monash won the Battle of Hamel, demonstrating the effectiveness of combined-arms techniques in trench warfare.
 * 1941 – German AB-Aktion in Poland: After capturing Lwów, the Nazis executed professors of the University of Lwów along with their families.
 * 1941 – The Holocaust: During the German occupation of Latvia, a number of synagogues in Riga were set on fire, killing many Jews who were confined within.
 * 1943 – The aircraft carrying Władysław Sikorski, prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile, crashed off Gibraltar, killing him and fifteen others and leading to several conspiracy theories.
 * 1945 – The Brazilian cruiser BRAZILIAN CRUISER Bahia (pictured) was accidentally sunk by one of its own crewmen, killing more than 300 people.
 * 1950 – The United States' anti-communist propaganda source Radio Free Europe made its first broadcast aimed at Czechoslovakia.
 * 1951 – William Shockley announced the invention of the junction transistor, for which he, John Bardeen, and Walter Houser Brattain later won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
 * 1965 – The first Annual Reminder, a series of pickets that were some of the earliest LGBT actions in the United States, took place at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
 * 1976 – Israeli forces raided Uganda's Entebbe International Airport to free hostages taken by hijackers on Air France Flight 139.
 * 1982 – Four Iranian diplomats were kidnapped after they were stopped at a checkpoint in northern Lebanon by Lebanese Phalange forces; their fates remain unknown.
 * 1988 – Kylie Minogue's first album, Kylie, was released, and went on to top the charts in the UK and New Zealand.
 * 2005 – The impactor of the NASA space probe Deep Impact collided with the comet Tempel 1, excavating interior material to study its composition.
 * Born/died: | Usama ibn Munqidh |b|1095| Raynald of Châtillon |d|1187| Elizabeth of Portugal |d|1336| Min Phalaung |d|1593| Brian Twyne |d|1644| John Leake |b|1656| Christian Fürchtegott Gellert |b|1715| Samuel Richardson |d|1761| John Adams and Thomas Jefferson |d|1826| Hubert Cecil Booth |b|1871| Jack Warhop |b|1884| Poundmaker |d|1886| Suzanne Lenglen |d|1938| Geraldo Rivera |b|1943| Andre Spitzer |b|1945| Sonia Pierre |b|1963| Yonatan Netanyahu |d|1976| Koko|b|1971| Victor Chang|d|1991| Swastima Khadka|b|1995| Barthélemy Mukenge|d|2018|

July 4: Independence Day in the United States (1776); Republic Day in the Philippines (1946); Liberation Day in Rwanda (1994)


 * 414 – Byzantine emperor Theodosius II proclaimed his elder sister Aelia Pulcheria as Augusta.
 * 1054 – Chinese astronomers recorded the sudden appearance of a "guest star", later identified as the supernova that created the Crab Nebula (pictured).
 * 1863 – American Civil War: Confederate forces failed in an attempt to recapture the Union-occupied Helena, Arkansas.
 * 1954 – In what is known as "The Miracle of Bern", West Germany defeated Hungary 3–2 to win the FIFA World Cup.
 * 1954 – CIA officers arrived in Guatemala City to begin Operation PBHistory in an attempt to justify the overthrowing of Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz one week earlier.