Today's Highlight in History:
On July 11, 1859, Big Ben, the great bell inside the famous London clock tower, chimed for the first time. (The clock itself had been keeping time since May 31.)
On this date:
In 1767, John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, was born in Braintree, Mass.
In 1798, the U.S. Marine Corps was formally re-established by a congressional act that also created the U.S. Marine Band.
In 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr mortally wounded former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton during a pistol duel in Weehawken, N.J.
In 1864, Confederate forces led by Gen. Jubal Early began an abortive invasion of Washington, turning back the next day.
In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first incumbent chief executive to travel through the Panama Canal.
In 1952, the Republican national convention, meeting in Chicago, nominated Dwight D. Eisenhower for president and Richard M. Nixon for vice president.
In 1955, the U.S. Air Force Academy swore in its first class of cadets at its temporary quarters, Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado.
In 1978, 216 people were immediately killed when a tanker truck overfilled with propylene gas exploded on a coastal highway south of Tarragona, Spain.
In 1979, the abandoned U.S. space station Skylab made a spectacular return to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere and showering debris over the Indian Ocean and Australia.
In 1989, actor and director Laurence Olivier died in Steyning, West Sussex, England, at age 82.
Ten years ago: A U.S. Air Force cargo jet, braving Antarctic winter, swept down over the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Center to drop off emergency medical supplies for Dr. Jerri Nielsen, a physician at the center who had discovered a lump in her breast.
