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Made for the 250thOn this day › July 9
What happened on July 9 in American history
July 9 is the 190th day of the year (the 191st in leap years). Patriot Compass has published 8 stories from July 9 spanning 1776 to 1962. Among them: in 1776, Washington has the Declaration read aloud to every brigade; British ships fill the harbor; and in 1795, Swan erases the last of America's debt to France; no foreign government is owed a dime.
1776Member story · 1776 Club
Washington has the Declaration read aloud to every brigade; British ships fill the harbor
Howe is massing troops on Staten Island, and the men who just heard the words that made them revolutionaries will face them within weeks.
1795Member story · 1776 Club
Swan erases the last of America's debt to France; no foreign government is owed a dime
The Scottish-born Boston financier, acting as France's agent, repackaged $2 million in Revolutionary-era obligations into private shares sold across the U.S. and Europe.
1850Member story · 1776 Club
Taylor is dead; Fillmore takes the oath before morning
The president, 65, collapsed days after the July 4 ceremony at the unfinished Washington Monument; the Union's slavery crisis now falls to his vice president.
1863
Gardner surrenders Port Hudson; the Union holds the Mississippi from source to sea
After 48 days on the bluff, half his men sick and the food gone, the Confederate general yields the last rebel stronghold on the river.
1868
Seward proclaims it law: the Fourteenth Amendment is part of the Constitution
The amendment settles in the document what Dred Scott left open, granting citizenship and equal protection to anyone born on American soil.
1944
Saipan falls to Smith's Marines and infantry; Japan's inner defense ring is broken
Twenty-four days through caves, cane fields, and Tapotchau's slopes: 3,100 Americans dead, 13,000 wounded, and roughly 30,000 Japanese killed.
1958Member story · 1776 Club
A rockslide in Lituya Bay drives a wall of water 1,720 feet up the mountainside; two boats are caught in the surge
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake drops 30 million cubic meters of rock into Gilbert Inlet; five die, but Howard Ulrich and his son ride the Edrie over the treeline and back.
1962Member story · 1776 Club
A Thor rocket detonates 250 miles up; streetlights go dark in Hawaii, and the sky turns red over the Pacific
The 1.4-megaton blast, 900 miles from Honolulu, paints bands of light from Samoa to New Zealand; hotel guests watch from rooftops.
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