History for July 9

History for July 9 - On-This-Day.com
Elias Howe 1819, Dean Koontz 1945 - Author, O.J. Simpson 1947 - Football player, actor 



Tom Hanks 1956 - Actor, Kelly McGillis 1957 - Actress, Fred Savage 1976 - Actor ("The Wonder Years") 


1540 - England's King Henry VIII had his 6-month-old marriage to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, annulled. 


1755 - General Edward Braddock was mortally wounded when French and Indian troops ambushed his force of British regulars and colonial militia. He died on July 13. 


1776 - The American Declaration of Independence was read aloud to Gen. George Washington's troops in New York. 


1868 - The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The amendment was designed to grant citizenship to and protect the civil liberties of recently freed slaves. It did this by prohibiting states from denying or abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, depriving any person of his life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denying to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 


1872 - The doughnut cutter was patented by John F. Blondel. 


1877 - Alexander Graham Bell, Gardiner Greene Hubbard, Thomas Sanders and Thomas Watson formed the Bell Telephone Company. 


1878 - The corncob pipe was patented by Henry Tibbe. 


1900 - The Commonwealth of Australia was established by an act of the British Parliament, uniting the separate colonies under a federal government. 


1943 - American and British forces made an amphibious landing on Sicily. 


1951 - U.S. President Truman asked Congress to formally end the state of war between the United States and Germany.