1822: Denmark Vesey was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, for planning the most extensive slave revolt in U.S. history.
1843: Alligator Falls Out of the Sky in Charleston, South Carolina during a thunderstorm.
It is believed that the strange incident happened when a waterspout carried an alligator from a body of water and dropped in on the city.
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1850: The death of Robert Peel.
He served twice as Prime Minister (1834โ1835 and 1841โ1846) and created the modern police force, leading to a new type of officer known in tribute to him as ‘bobbies’ or ‘peelers’. This statue of Robert Peel (see picture) is in Bury, the town of his birth.
1900: The Zeppelin Takes Off for the First Time
The rigid aircraft named after Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, the inventor of the dirigible and founder of the Zeppelin Airship Construction Company, made its first flight over Lake Constance in Germany. Unlike blimps or balloons, Zeppelins are built by stretching material over a rigid framework, usually made of metal. Zeppelins can be steered and they were used by the German Air Force to conduct aerial attacks during the First World War.
1937: Failed Kenyan landowner Karen Blixen publishes her memoirs Out of Africa. Her superb prose and candid accounts of her love affairs will make the book a global best-seller that will be considered a โclassic.โ However, Blixen sees Africa as merely a stage for the drama of her life, and Africans as minor supporting players. Unmentioned is that her 6,000-acre estate was carved from Maasai lands seized by the British. Writing about the book from an African perspective, Kenyaโs literary master Ngลฉgฤฉ wa Thiongโo will say, โAs if in compensation for unfulfilled desires and longings, the baroness turned Kenya into a vast erotic dreamland in which her several white lovers appeared as young gods and her Kenyan servants as usable curs and other animals.โ
1937: American aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan are heard for the last time before disappearing. They were attempting to make the first around-the-world flight in a Lockheed Model 10 Electra. Neither they nor the plane has ever been found and that has led to speculation about what happened to them. An accomplished pilot, Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
1961: Accidentally pulling a skylight onto his head in his 20s left a permanent welt that lasted for the rest of Hemingwayโs life; it also gave him one of the many serious concussions he suffered over the years, which may have given him a traumatic brain injury, which may in turn partly explain some of his capricious and volatile behavior, as well as precipitated his eventual suicide on this day.
1964: President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act. On July 2, 1964, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law the historic Civil Rights Act in a nationally televised ceremony at the White House. In the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. The 10 years that followed saw great strides for the African American civil rights movement, as non-violent demonstrations won thousands of supporters to the cause.
1990: Pilgrim stampede kills 1,400. A stampede of religious pilgrims in a pedestrian tunnel in Mecca leaves more than 1,400 people dead on July 2, 1990. This was at the time the most deadly of a series of incidents over 20 years affecting Muslims making the trip to Mecca. To the followers of Islam, traveling to Mecca in Saudi Arabia is known as performing the Hajj. The pilgrimage is one of the five pillars of the religion and must be done at least once in a followerโs lifetime if personal circumstances permit.
1996: Weather experts predicted that global warming would have the effect of moving Britain 100 miles south in the next 25 years, bringing summer droughts and winter rainstorms.
1998: Kofi Annan, the UN scribe, on a visit to Abuja reports that Chief M K O Abiola longs for freedom and may have dumped his mandate.
2001: World’s First Self-Contained Artificial Heart Transplant.
59-year old American Robert L. Tools became the first person to receive a self-contained artificial heart transplant called the AbioCor at the Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. The AbioCor is an artificial heart that is not connected to wires or an external pump.
2002: American businessman, Steve Fossett completes the first solo around-the-world Balloon Flight
This was Fossett’s 6th attempt to circumnavigate the world. It took him 13 days in a balloon called Spirit of Freedom to cover 20,000 miles.
2010: Football governing body FIFA Friday gave Nigeria just under two days to reverse its decision to ban the national football team from international matches following its poor showing at the World Cup.
BIRTHS ON THIS DAY: July 02
Lindsay Lohan, 38 years
Lindsay Dee Lohan is an American actress, singer-songwriter, producer, and entrepreneur. Born in New York City and raised on Long Island, Lohan was signed to Ford Models at age three.
Burna Boy, 33 years
Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu, also known as Burna Boy, Grammy Award-winning singer, rapper, and songwriter, was born at Port Harcourt, Nigeria on 2 July 1991. From the instant success of his single Like to Party from his 2012 debut studio album L.I.F.E. he became an influential star in both the African and international hip hop scene.
Patrice Lumumba (2 July 1925 – 17 January 1961)
Independence fighter and first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo (1961), at Katakokombe, Belgium Congo. After leading his country to independence, he confronted internal and external opposition that led to his murder after heroic but failed attempts to keep the DRC from disintegrating. He died at the age of 36.
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