This Day in History
1890: Wyoming is admitted to the Union as the 44th state.
1913: Death Valley, California, temperatures reach a whopping 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.7 Celsius), the hottest on U.S. record.
1934: In baseball 's second All-Star Game, Carl Hubbell of the Giants strikes out 5 players in a row who will go on to the Hall of Fame: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin.
1973: The Bahamas gains independence from Britain after 250 years as a crown colony.
1985: Coca-Cola announces that it will bring back its original Coke formula—replaced by New Coke in April, to a storm of protest—as Coca-Cola Classic.
The Rainbow Warrior, a ship belonging to the environmental group Greenpeace, is sunk, apparently by a bomb, in New Zealand.:
1997: British scientists, using DNA from a Neanderthal skeleton, back a theory that humanity descended from an "African Eve" over 100,000 years ago.
1999: The United States wins the Women's World Cup in soccer, defeating China in the final on penalty kicks.
Today's Birthdays
1509: John Calvin, theologian and leader of the Protestant Reformation (Noyon, France; died 1564)
1723: Sir William Blackstone, jurist and legal scholar (London, England; died 1780)
1834: James Whistler, painter (Lowell, MA; died 1903)
1871: Marcel Proust, novelist (Auteuil, France; died 1922)
1895: Carl Orff, composer (Munich, Germany; died 1982)
1897: John Gilbert, actor (Logan, UT; died 1936)
1915: Saul Bellow, author (Lachine, Quebec, Canada; died 2005)
1920: David Brinkley, TV anchor/journalist (Wilmington, NC; died 2003)
1926: Fred Gwynne, actor and writer (New York, NY; died 1993)
1931: Alice Munro, writer (Wingham, Ontario, Canada)
1933: Jerry Herman, composer/lyricist (New York, NY)
1943: Arthur Ashe, tennis champion (Richmond, VA; died 1993)
1945: Virginia Wade, tennis champion (Bournemouth, England)
1947: Arlo Guthrie, folk singer/songwriter (New York, NY)
1954: Andre Dawson, baseball player (Miami, FL)
1956: Anita Hill, legal scholar and sexual harassment complainant against Clarence Thomas (Morris, OK)
