1863: The Siege of Vicksburg began during the Civil War, ending on July 4 with a Union victory that gave its forces control of the Mississippi River.

1896: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, endorsed “separate but equal” racial segregation. (The decision was reversed in 1954 by Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.)

1927: In America’s deadliest school attack, part of a schoolhouse in Bath Township, Michigan, was blown up with explosives planted by local farmer Andrew Kehoe, who then set off a bomb in his truck; the attacks killed 38 children and six adults, including Kehoe, who’d earlier killed his wife. (Authorities said Kehoe was seeking revenge for losing a township clerk election.)

1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure creating the Tennessee Valley Authority, the largest public utility in America.

1973: Harvard law professor Archibald Cox was appointed Watergate special prosecutor by U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson.

1980: The Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington state erupted, leaving an estimated 57 people dead or missing.

1981: The New York Native, a biweekly newspaper directed toward gay men and lesbians, carried a story informing of “an exotic new disease” among LGBTQ+ people; it was the first published report about what came to be known as AIDS.

1998: The U.S. government filed an antitrust case against Microsoft, saying the powerful software company had a “choke hold” on competitors that was denying consumers important choices about how they bought and used computers. (The Justice Department and Microsoft reached a settlement in 2001.)