History of 2 July
1926 – The U.S. Congress established the Army Air Corps.
1937 – American aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart disappeared in the Central Pacific during an attempt to fly around the world at the equator.
1939 – At Mount Rushmore, Theodore Roosevelt’s face was dedicated.
1944 – American bombers, as part of Operation Gardening, dropped land mines, leaflets, and bombs on German-occupied Budapest.
1947 – An object crashed near Roswell, NM. The U.S. Army Air Force insisted it was a weather balloon, but eyewitness accounts led to speculation that it might have been an alien spacecraft.
1962 – Wal-Mart Discount City opened in Rogers, Arkansas. It was the first Walmart 
1964 – U.S. President Johnson signed the “Civil Rights Act of 1964” into law. The act made it illegal in the U.S. to discriminate against others because of their race.
1967 – The U.S. Marine Corps launched Operation Buffalo in response to the North Vietnamese Army’s efforts to seize the Marine base at Con Thien.
1976 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was not inherently cruel or unusual.
1976 – North Vietnam and South Vietnam were reunited.
1979 – The U.S. Mint officially released the Susan B. Anthony coin in Rochester, NY.
1980 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter reinstated draft registration for males 18 years of age.
1981 – Soyuz T-6 returned to Earth.
1982 – Larry Walters (“Lawnchair Larry”) took flight in his homemade airship that consisted of a lawn chair with 45 helium-filled weather balloons attached to it. He stayed in flight for about an hour.
1985 – General Motors announced that it was installing electronic road maps as an option in some of its higher-priced cars.
1995 – “Forbes” magazine reported that Microsoft’s chairman, Bill Gates, was the worth $12.9 billion, making him the world’s richest man.
1998 – Cable News Network (CNN) retracted a story that alleged that U.S. commandos had used nerve gas to kill American defectors during the Vietnam War.
2000 – In Mexico, Vicente Fox Quesada of the National Action Party (PAN) defeated Francisco Labastida Ochoa of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the presidential election. The PRI had controlled the presidency in Mexico since the party was founded in 1929.
2001 – The AbioCor self-contained artificial heart is first implanted.
2002 – Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly solo around the world nonstop in a balloon.
2005 – The Live 8 benefit concerts take place in the G8 states and in South Africa. More than 1,000 musicians perform and are broadcast on 182 television networks and 2,000 radio networks.
2008 – Colombian conflict: Íngrid Betancourt, a member of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia, is released from captivity after being held for six and a half years by FARC.
2010 – The South Kivu tank truck explosion in the Democratic Republic of the Congo kills at least 230 people.
2013 – The International Astronomical Union names Pluto’s fourth and fifth moons, Kerberos and Styx.
2013 – A magnitude 6.1 earthquake strikes Aceh, Indonesia, killing at least 42 people and injuring 420 others.
2016 – Suicide bombing of Karrada in Baghdad kills at least 341 people.
Celebrating Birthday Today
- 1981 – Nathan Ellington, English footballer
- 1981 – Carlos Rogers, American football player
- 1983 – Michelle Branch, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1983 – Kyle Hogg, English cricketer
- 1984 – Thomas Kortegaard, Danish footballer
- 1984 – Johnny Weir, American figure skater
- 1985 – Rhett Bomar, American football player
- 1985 – Chad Henne, American football player
- 1985 – Ashley Tisdale, American actress, singer, and producer
- 1986 – Brett Cecil, American baseball player
- 1986 – Lindsay Lohan, American actress, and singer
- 1987 – Esteban Granero, Spanish footballer
- 1988 – Lee Chung-Yong, South Korean footballer
- 1989 – Nadezhda Grishaeva, Russian basketball player
- 1989 – Alex Morgan, American soccer player
- 1990 – Merritt Mathias, American soccer player
- 1990 – Danny Rose, English footballer
- 1990 – Bill Tupou, New Zealand rugby league player
- 1990 – Margot Robbie, Australian actress, and producer
- 1992 – Madison Chock, American ice dancer
- 1993 – Vince Staples, American rapper and actor
- 1994 – Henrik Kristoffersen, Norwegian skier
- 1995 – Ryan Murphy, American swimmer
- 1996 – Julia Grabher, an Austrian tennis player