Today In History in 1859 French acrobat Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope; in 1906 The U.S. Congress passes the Meat Inspection, Pure Food and Drug Act; and in 1953 the first Chevrolet Corvette rolls off the assembly line. Our on this day in history archives contain over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

June 30 is the 181st day of the year (182nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 184 days remain until the end of the year.

EVENTS

1805 – Under An act to divide the Indiana Territory into two separate governments, adopted by the U.S. Congress on January 11, 1805, the Michigan Territory is organized.

1859 – French acrobat Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope.

1860 – The 1860 Oxford evolution debate at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History takes place.

1864 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln grants Yosemite Valley to California for "public use, resort and recreation".

1882 – Charles J. Guiteau is hanged in Washington, D.C. for the assassination of U.S. President James Garfield.

1886 – The first transcontinental train trip across Canada departs from Montreal, Quebec. It arrives in Port Moody, British Columbia on July 4.

1892 – The Homestead Strike begins near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

1900 – A savage fire wrecked three steamships docked at a pier in Hoboken, New Jersey. Over 200 crew members and passengers are killed, and hundreds injured.

1901–present

1905 – Albert Einstein sends the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, in which he introduces special relativity, for publication in Annalen der Physik.

1906 – The United States Congress passes the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act.

1912 – The Regina Cyclone, Canada's deadliest tornado event, kills 28 people in Regina, Saskatchewan.

1921 – U.S. President Warren G. Harding appoints former President William Howard Taft as Chief Justice of the United States.

1922 – In Washington D.C., U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes and Dominican Ambassador Francisco J. Peynado sign the Hughes–Peynado agreement, which ends the United States occupation of the Dominican Republic.

1934 – The Night of the Long Knives, Adolf Hitler's violent purge of his political rivals in Germany, takes place.

1936 – Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia appeals for aid to the League of Nations against Italy's invasion of his country.

1937 – The world's first emergency telephone number, 999, is introduced in London.

1944 – World War II: The Battle of Cherbourg ends with the fall of the strategically valuable port to American forces.

1953 – The first Chevrolet Corvette rolls off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan.

1956 – A TWA Super Constellation and a United Airlines DC-7 collide above the Grand Canyon in Arizona and crash, killing all 128 on board both airliners.

1959 – A United States Air Force F-100 Super Sabre from Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, crashes into a nearby elementary school, killing 11 students plus six residents from the local neighborhood.

1960 – Belgian Congo gains independence as Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville).

1963 – Ciaculli bombing: a car bomb, intended for Mafia boss Salvatore Greco, kills seven police officers and military personnel near Palermo.

1966 – The National Organization for Women, the United States' largest feminist organization, is founded.

1968 – Pope Paul VI issues the Credo of the People of God.

1971 – The crew of the Soviet Soyuz 11 spacecraft are killed when their air supply escapes through a faulty valve.

1972 – The first leap second is added to the UTC time system.

1973 – Concorde 001 intercepts the path of a total solar eclipse and follows the moon's shadow, experiencing the longest total eclipse observation.

1974 – The Baltimore municipal strike of 1974 begins.

1977 – The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization disbands.

1985 – Thirty-nine American hostages from the hijacked TWA Flight 847 are freed in Beirut after being held for 17 days.

1986 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Bowers v. Hardwick that states can outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults.

1989 – A coup d'état in Sudan deposes the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and President Ahmed al-Mirghani.

1990 – East and West Germany merge their economies.

1994 – During a test flight of an Airbus A330-300 at Toulouse–Blagnac Airport, the aircraft crashes killing all seven people on board.

2007 – A Jeep Cherokee filled with propane canisters drives into the entrance of Glasgow Airport, Scotland in a failed terrorist attack. This was linked to the 2007 London car bombs that had taken place the day before.

2009 – Yemenia Flight 626, an Airbus A310-300, crashes into the Indian Ocean near Comoros, killing 152 of the 153 people on board. A 14-year-old girl named Bahia Bakari survives the crash.

2013 – Nineteen firefighters die controlling a wildfire near Yarnell, Arizona.

2013 – Protests begin around Egypt against President Mohamed Morsi and the ruling Freedom and Justice Party, leading to their overthrow during the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état.

2015 – A Hercules C-130 military aircraft with 113 people on board crashes in a residential area in Medan, Indonesia, resulting in at least 116 deaths.

2019 – Donald Trump becomes the first sitting US President to visit the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea).

2021 – The Tiger Fire ignites near Black Canyon City, Arizona, and goes on to burn 16,278 acres (6,587 ha) of land before being fully contained on July 30.

2023 – A Tajik citizen with ISIS connections, wanted in Tajikistan for murder and kidnapping, kills two people at Chișinău International Airport in Moldova, after being denied entry to the country.