Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/July 9

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 * 551 – An estimated 30,000 people died when a massive earthquake struck the Roman province of Phoenice.
 * 1640 – The Virginia Governor's Council made John Punch the first legally recognized slave in England's North American colonies.
 * 1745 – War of the Austrian Succession: French victory at the Battle of Melle enabled their subsequent capture of Ghent from the Austrian Netherlands.
 * 1790 – Russo-Swedish War: During the Battle of Svensksund in the Baltic Sea, the Swedish Navy captured a third of the Russian fleet.
 * 1811 – British explorer David Thompson posted a notice at the confluence of the Columbia and Snake Rivers (in modern Washington state, U.S.), claiming the area for Great Britain.
 * 1850 – Following Zachary Taylor's death, Millard Fillmore became president of the United States, the last member of the Whig Party to hold that office.
 * 1868 – The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, including the Citizenship Clause and the Equal Protection Clause, was ratified by the minimum required twenty-eight states.
 * 1937 – Nitrate film being stored in a 20th Century Fox facility spontaneously combusted, destroying more than 40,000 reels of negatives and film prints.
 * 1955 – Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell (pictured) and nine other preeminent intellectuals and scientists issued the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, calling for a conference to assess the dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction.
 * 1962 – The United States conducted the Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear test, the largest nuclear explosion in outer space.
 * 1981 – Nintendo released the arcade game Donkey Kong (cabinet pictured), which featured the debut of Mario, one of the most famous characters in video-game history.
 * 1995 – Sri Lankan Civil War: After advising civilians to take shelter in places of worship, the Sri Lanka Air Force bombed a church in Navaly, killing at least 147 people.
 * 2008 – Under the belief that Israel and the United States were planning to attack its nuclear program, Iran conducted the Great Prophet III missile test and war games exercise.
 * Born/died this day: | Anastasius I Dicorus |d|518| Ariwara no Narihira |d|880|Jan van Eyck |d|1441| Elizabeth of Austria |b|1526| Sebald Heyden |d|1561| Ann Radcliffe |b|1764| Anna Morandi Manzolini |d|1774| Edmund Burke |d|1797| Elias Howe |b|1819| John Archibald Wheeler |b|1911| Mercedes Sosa |b|1935| Svetolik Dragačevac|d|1942| Tom Hanks |b|1956| Courtney Love |b|1964| Shelton Benjamin |b|1975| Shin Jae-chul |d|2012| Toshi Seeger|d|2013| Fernando de la Rúa|d|2019| Ross Perot|d|2019|