Day Two at Gettysburg – Today In Southern History
2 July 1863
2 July 1863
On this date in 1863…
The Battle of Gettysburg continued to rage with Confederate assaults on Little & Big Round Tops, Devil’s Den, the Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard, Cemetery Hill and Culp’s Hill at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Other Years:
1776 – Richard Henry Lee of Virginia’s resolution that the American colonies “are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States” was adopted by the Continental Congress.
1810 – Confederate statesman and general, Robert Augustus Toombs was born in Washington, Georgia.
1843 – An alligator fell from sky during a thunderstorm into the streets of Charleston, South Carolina.
1937 – A 24-hour honor guard was first posted at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia
1947 – An object crashed near Roswell, New Mexico that the U.S. Army Air Force insisted was a weather balloon, but eyewitness accounts claimed was an alien spacecraft.
1956 – Elvis Presley recorded “Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cruel” at the RCA studio in NYC
1962 – The first Wal-Mart Discount City opened in Rogers, Arkansas.
1964 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.
1980 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter re-instated draft registration for males 18 years of age.
1989 – Jockey Steve Cauthen of Walton, KY won the Irish Derby on Old Vic to become the first rider in history to sweep the world’s four major Derbies (Kentucky, Epsom, French, Irish)
1994 – A US Air DC-9 crashed in rural North Carolina, killing
1998 – Atlanta-based CNN retracted a story it aired that alleged that U.S. troops had used nerve gas to kill American defectors during the Vietnam War.
2001 – The Bush Administration announced it would let oil companies drill on 1,500,000 acres of the Gulf of Mexico
2015 – BP agreed to compensate US government & gulf states $18.7 billion for the 2010 Gulf oil spill
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