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“We are sinful not merely because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life.”
~ Franz Kafka
Wikiquote (Franz Kafka (July 3 ,1883 – June 3, 1924) a German-language writer of novels and short stories, regarded by critics as one of the most influential authors of the 20th century.)
(Franz Lafka - The Metamorphosis, 1915 - German: Die Verwandlung, also sometimes translated as The Transformation)
July 3rd, 324
Byzantine Empire (East Roman Empire):
324 - Battle of Adrianople: Constantine I defeats Licinius, who flees to Byzantium.
Wikipedia Image: The Baptism of Constantine painted by Raphael's pupils (1520–1524, fresco, Vatican City, Apostolic Palace); Mural of Saints Cyril and Methodius, 19th century, Troyan Monastery, Bulgaria; Justinian I depicted on one of the famous mosaics of the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna; The Greek fire was first used by the Byzantine Navy during the Byzantine-Arab Wars (from the Madrid Skylitzes, Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid); Alexios I, founder of the Komnenos dynasty.
Photo: Byzantine Empire is the great church of Hagia Sophia (Church of the Holy Wisdom) in Constantinople (562).
July 3rd, 987
Hugh Capet is crowned King of France, the first of the Capetian dynasty that would rule France until the French Revolution in 1792.
Wikipedia Painting: An imagined image of Hugh Capet; no contemporary images of Hugh exist. New World Encyclopedia
July 3rd, 1608
Québec City is founded by Samuel de Champlain.
Wikipedia Image: Samuel de Champlain: Statue of Samuel de Champlain at sunrise (looking to the north-west; with a similar expressive face as traditionally Jacques Cartier's) ● Painting by George Agnew Reid, done for the third centennial (1908), showing the arrival of Samuel de Champlain on the site of Quebec City.
July 3rd, 1754
French and Indian War: George Washington surrenders Fort Necessity to French forces.
Wikipedia Painting: Major Washington and a wounded General Braddock at the Battle of Monongahela. Lemercier, 1854; Portrait of Washington was painted in 1772 by Charles Willson Peale, and shows Washington in uniform as a colonel of the Virginia Regiment. The original hangs in Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. It is the earliest known depiction of Washington; British troops under Edward Braddock near Fort Duquesne, Pa., during the French and Indian War. Credit: MPI / Hulton Archive / Getty Images; Indian from Death of General Wolfe painting By Benjamin West in 1770; Death of General James Wolfe by stray cannon shot at Battle of Quebec in 1759 Painted by Benjamin West in 1770.
July 3rd, 1767
Adresseavisen, Norway's oldest newspaper still in print, is founded and the first edition is published.
Wikipedia Photo: Adresseavisen, Norway's oldest newspaper still in print.
July 3rd, 1775
American Revolutionary War:
1775 - George Washington takes command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1778 - Wyoming Valley massacre: British forces kill 360 people.
Wikipedia Paintings: Washington Crossing the Delaware, by Emanuel Leutz; Battle of the Chesapeake, French (left) and British (right) lines; Battle of Bunker Hill, The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill by John Trumbull; The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 13, 1782, by John Singleton Copley; Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau at Yorktown, 1781; "The surrender at Saratoga" shows General Daniel Morgan in front of a French de Vallière 4-pounder; Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown by (John Trumbull, 1797).
Grand Union - Stars and Stripes Flag
July 3rd, 1819
The Bank of Savings in New York City, the first savings bank in the United States opens.
Wikipedia Painting: The first bank in the U.S. opened in New York City
July 3rd, 1848
Slaves are freed in the Danish West Indies (now U.S. Virgin Islands) by Peter von Scholten in the culmination of a year-long plot by enslaved Africans.
Wikipedia Painting: The Slave Ship, J. M. W. Turner's representation of the mass-murder of slaves, inspired by the Zong Massacre.
July 3rd, 1849
The French enter Rome in order to restore Pope Pius IX to power. This would prove a major obstacle to Italian unification.
Wikipedia Painting: Pope Pius IX
July 3rd, 1852
Congress establishes the United States' 2nd mint in San Francisco, California.
Wikipedia Photo: Second United States Mint in San Francisco, California
July 3rd, 1863
American Civil War:
1863 - Battle of Gettysburg: Pickett's Charge.
Wikipedia Image: ● Lincoln Memorial; an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument.
● The northern army led by George McClellan and the southern army led by Robert E. Lee met at Antietam Creek, Maryland in September, 1862. It was a bloody battle where 13,000 Confederates and 12,000 Union troops died in just one day. McClellan had hesitated to attack before the battle thus letting the southern troops regroup. Also, he had saved reserves and refused to use them at the end of the battle thinking that Lee was holding reserves for a counterattack, even though those reserves didn't exist. The Union victory stopped Lee's northward advance and was a turning point in the war.
● Battle of Antietam / Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland
● Battle of Mobile Bay (1890) by Xanthus Russell Smith.
● Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. The Atlantic.
July 3rd, 1866
Austro-Prussian War: Battle of Königgratz; Prussia takes over as the prominent German nation from Austria.
Wikipedia Painting: Austrian victory at the Battle of Lissa
July 3rd, 1884
Dow Jones and Company publishes its first stock average.
Wikipedia Photo: The New York Stock Exchange floor, credit Associated Press; and fisheye view, credit © Geoff Sills, © Eric L Bowers.
July 3rd, 1886
Karl Benz officially unveils the Benz Patent Motorwagen - the first purpose-built automobile.
Wikipedia Photo: Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz, credit Daimler.com
Image: 1885 Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler's motorcycle ● 2012 Mercedes-Benz Twin-Turbo 5.5L V8
July 3rd, 1890
Idaho is admitted as the 43rd U.S. state.
Wikipedia Photo: Idaho; Boulder Mountains, Blaine County, Idaho ● Bear Lake viewed from Bear Lake State Park ● Lake Pend Oreille ● Shoshone Falls in south central Idaho ● Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed in the Owyhee Mountains ● Digitally colored elevation map of Idaho USGS.
July 3rd, 1898
Spanish-American War: The Spanish fleet, led by Pascual Cervera y Topete, is destroyed by the U.S. Navy in Santiago, Cuba.
Wikipedi Image: Satellite image Cuba, credit: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA / GSFC; A Catalan satirical drawing published in La Campana de Gràcia (1896), criticizing U.S. behavior regarding Cuba; W. A. Rogers. "The Battle of Desmayo - The Cuban Balaklava" In: Harper's Pictorial History of the War with Spain. Vol. 1. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1899. NYPL, United States History, Local History and Genealogy Division.
July 3rd, 1940
World War II:
1940 - The French fleet of the Atlantic based at Mers el Kébir is bombarded by the British fleet, coming from Gibraltar, causing the loss of three battleships: Dunkerque, Provence and Bretagne. One thousand two hundred sailors perish.
1944 - Operation Bagration: Minsk is liberated from Nazi control by Soviet troops.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945. USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke November 25th, 1944. German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
July 3rd, 1988
Aviation accidents and incidents:
1988 - United States Navy warship USS Vincennes shoots down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people aboard.
Wikipedia Photo: ● Pan AM 747 ● U.S. Airways flight 1549 also known as the "Miracle on the Hudson" navigates an exit ramp near Burlington, New Jersey, June 5, 2011 ● Passengers stand on the wings of a U.S. Airways plane as a ferry pulls up to it after it landed in the Hudson River in New York, Reuters ● US Airways plane crashes into New York Hudson River, Photo: AP
July 3rd, 1994
The deadliest day in Texas traffic history, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety, forty-six people are killed in crashes.
Wikipedia Photo: August 8, 2008; a Texas state trooper makes photographs at a bus accident scene on U.S. 75 North bound that killed several people in Sherman, Texas. Associated Press.
July 3rd, 1996
The Stone of Scone is returned to Scotland.
Wikipedia Photo: Replica of the Stone of Scone at Scone Palace, Scone Abbey, Scotland.
July 3rd, 2013
Modern conflicts in the Middle East, social unrest and terrorist attacks:
2013 - Egyptian coup d'état (2013); A President of Egypt Mohamed Morsi is overthrown by the military after 4 days of protests all over the country calling for Morsi's resignation, to which he didn't respond. President of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt Adly Mansour is declared acting president.
Wikipedia Photo: Middle East satellite image, NASA. ● Camels are seen early morning on a beach in the Marina area of Dubai October 16, 2008. (Steve Crisp, Reuters) ● A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad burns during clashes between rebels and Syrian troops in Selehattin, near Aleppo, on July 23, 2012. (Bulent Kilic, AFP / GettyImages) ● Egyptians gather in their thousands in Tahrir Square to mark the one year anniversary of the revolution on Jan. 25, 2012 in Cairo Egypt. Tens of thousands have gathered in the square on the first anniversary of the Arab uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. (Jeff J Mitchell, Getty Images) ● Black smoke rises above the Tehran skyline as supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi burn tires and other material in the streets as they fight running battles with police to protest the declared results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Ben Curtis, AP) ● The Iron Dome defense system fires to interecpt incoming missiles from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012. (Tsafrir Abayov, AP)