Today in HistoryToday is Monday, July 2, the 183rd day of 2007. There are 182 days left in the year.

ON THIS DATE<$>

In 1776, the Continental Congress passed a resolution saying that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States”.

In 1807, in the wake of the Chesapeake incident, in which the crew of a British frigate boarded a US ship and forcibly removed four suspected deserters, president Thomas Jefferson ordered all British ships to vacate US territorial waters.

In 1881, US president James Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau at the Washington railroad station; Garfield died the following September. (Guiteau was hanged in June 1882.)

In 1900, count Ferdinand von Zeppelin flew his first airship in Germany.

In 1915, Porfirio Diaz, Mexican soldier and president from 1877-1911, died in Paris.

In 1932, Portugal’s last king, Manuel II, died. He succeeded to the throne in 1908 but was overthrown in a revolution two years later.

In 1937, Amelia Earhart and co-pilot Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific while trying to fly around the world.

In 1940, the liner Arandora Star was torpedoed by a German submarine while transporting German and Italian prisoners to Canada in the Second World War. More than 750 prisoners and crew died.

In 1961, author Ernest Hemingway shot himself to death at his home in Ketchum, Idaho.

In 1964, US president Lyndon Baines Johnson signed into law a sweeping civil rights bill passed by Congress.

In 1976, North and South Vietnam were reunited as one country with Hanoi as the capital following the Vietnam War. Vietnam had been divided since 1954.

In 1987, 18 illegal aliens were found dead inside a locked boxcar near Sierra Blanca, Texas, in what authorities called a botched smuggling attempt; a 19th man survived.

In 2002, the millionaire Steve Fossett became the first solo balloonist to circle the globe non-stop, sailing into the record books off Australia’s southern coast. He had flown nearly 19,500 miles around the southern hemisphere. He finally landed on July 4.

>THOUGHT FOR TODAY

“The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.” — Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States (1856-1924).