📜 This Day in History

July 8

• 1663Baptist minister John Clarke was granted the Rhode Island Royal Charter, described as the "grandest instrument of human liberty ever constructed".
• 1776The United States Declaration of Independence received its first formal public reading, in Philadelphia.
• 1950Korean War: American troops withdrew from Cheonan, in modern-day South Korea, after suffering heavy casualties from a North Korean attack.
• 1966King Mwambutsa IV of Burundi was deposed in a coup d'état by his son, Prince Charles Ndizi.
• 2014German citizen Lars Mittank disappeared from Varna Airport, Bulgaria; his last known movements were widely watched on YouTube.
• 2022Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated with an improvised firearm.

Born on this day

• 1621Jean de La Fontaine, French author and poet (died 1695)
• 1839John D. Rockefeller, American businessman and philanthropist, founded the Standard Oil Company (died 1937)
• 1894Pyotr Kapitsa, Russian physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1984)
• 1895Igor Tamm, Russian physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1971)