📜 This Day in History

July 2

• 626Li Shimin led his forces to assassinate his rival brothers in a coup for the imperial throne of Tang China.
• 1724On the Feast of the Visitation, Bach led the first performance of his Meine Seel erhebt den Herren, BWV 10, based on the German Magnificat.
• 1881U.S. president James A. Garfield was fatally shot by Charles J. Guiteau at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station in Washington, D.C.
• 1964The Civil Rights Act was signed into law, outlawing segregation in schools, at the workplace, and other facilities that served the general public in the United States.
• 1998Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling, the second novel of the Harry Potter series, was published.
• 2020A landslide at a jade mine in Hpakant killed 175–200 miners, the deadliest mining accident in Burmese history.

Born on this day

• 1877Hermann Hesse, German-born Swiss poet, novelist, and painter, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1962)
• 1923Wisława Szymborska, Polish poet and translator, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2012)
• 1925Patrice Lumumba, Congolese politician, 1st Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (died 1961)
• 1929Imelda Marcos, Filipino politician; 10th First Lady of the Philippines