Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

On Ju­ly 4, 1776, the De­c­la­ra­tion of In­de­pen­dence was adopt­ed by del­e­gates to the Sec­ond Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress in Philadel­phia.

Al­so on this date:

In 1802, the Unit­ed States Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my of­fi­cial­ly opened at West Point, New York.

In 1817, con­struc­tion of the Erie Canal be­gan in Rome, New York.

In 1826, 50 years to the day af­ter the De­c­la­ra­tion of In­de­pen­dence was adopt­ed, for­mer pres­i­dents John Adams and Thomas Jef­fer­son both died.

In 1831, the fifth pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, James Mon­roe, died in New York City at age 73.

In 1855, the first edi­tion of Walt Whit­man’s “Leaves of Grass” was pub­lished.

In 1863, the Civ­il War Siege of Vicks­burg, Mis­sis­sip­pi, end­ed as a Con­fed­er­ate gar­ri­son sur­ren­dered to Union forces.

In 1910, in what was billed as “The Fight of the Cen­tu­ry,” Black world heavy­weight box­ing cham­pi­on Jack John­son de­feat­ed white for­mer champ “Gen­tle­man” Jim Jef­fries in Reno, Neva­da; race ri­ots across the coun­try fol­low­ing the fight killed more than 20 peo­ple.

In 1912, the 48-star Amer­i­can flag, rec­og­niz­ing New Mex­i­co and Ari­zona state­hood, was adopt­ed.

In 1939, Lou Gehrig of the New York Yan­kees de­liv­ered his fa­mous farewell speech in which he called him­self “the luck­i­est man on the face of the earth.”

In 1946, the Unit­ed States and the Philip­pines signed the Treaty of Mani­la, rec­og­niz­ing Philip­pine in­de­pen­dence from the US.

In 1960, the cur­rent 50-star ver­sion of the US flag was adopt­ed.

In 1976, Amer­i­ca cel­e­brat­ed its bi­cen­ten­ni­al with day­long fes­tiv­i­ties; Pres­i­dent Ger­ald R. Ford made stops in Val­ley Forge, Penn­syl­va­nia, In­de­pen­dence Hall in Philadel­phia and New York, where more than 200 ships pa­rad­ed up the Hud­son Riv­er in Op­er­a­tion Sail.

In 1987, Klaus Bar­bie, the for­mer Gestapo chief known as the “Butch­er of Ly­on”, was con­vict­ed by a French court of crimes against hu­man­i­ty and sen­tenced to life in prison. (Bar­bie died in prison in Sep­tem­ber 1991.)

In 1995, the space shut­tle At­lantis and the Russ­ian space sta­tion Mir part­ed af­ter spend­ing five days in or­bit docked to­geth­er.

In 2012, sci­en­tists at the Eu­ro­pean Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Nu­clear Re­search (CERN) in Gene­va cheered the ap­par­ent end of a decades-long quest for a new sub­atom­ic par­ti­cle called the Hig­gs bo­son, or “God par­ti­cle”.

In 2013, the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty re­opened on the Fourth of Ju­ly, eight months af­ter Su­per­storm Sandy shut­tered the na­tion­al sym­bol of free­dom.