Today is Thursday, July 11, the 193rd day of 2024. There are 173 days left in the year.
On July 11, 1995, the U.N.-designated “safe haven” of Srebrenica (sreh-breh-NEET’-sah) in Bosnia-Herzegovina fell to Bosnian Serb forces, who subsequently carried out the killings of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
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, New Jersey. (Hamilton died the next day.)
In 1859, Big Ben, the great bell inside the famous London clock tower, chimed for the first time.
In 1864, Confederate forces led by General Jubal Early began an abortive invasion of Washington, D.C., turning back the next day.
In 1914, Babe Ruth made his Major League baseball debut, pitching the Boston Red Sox to a 4-3 victory over Cleveland.
In 1921, fighting in the Irish War of Independence ended with a truce.
In 1960, Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” was published.
In 1972, the World Chess Championship opened as grandmasters Bobby Fischer of the United States and defending champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union began play in Reykjavik, Iceland. (Fischer won after 21 games.)
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 1991, a Nigeria Airways DC-8 carrying Muslim pilgrims crashed at the Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, international airport, killing all 261 people on board.
In 2006, eight bombs hit a commuter rail network during evening rush hour in Mumbai, India, killing more than 200 people.
In 2022, President Joe Biden revealed the first image from NASA’s new space telescope, the farthest humanity had ever seen in both time and distance, closer to the dawn of the universe and the edge of the cosmos.
