July 2 in Military History

The Second Continental Congress votes to approve Richard Henry Lee's resolution declaring independence from Great Britain, the actual legal act of independence, two days before the Declaration is formally adopted.

Desperate fighting at Little Round Top, Devil's Den, the Peach Orchard, and the Wheatfield as Lee attacks both Union flanks at Gettysburg, nearly breaking the Federal line.

President James A. Garfield is shot by Charles Guiteau at a Washington, D.C., train station. A Civil War veteran who fought at Shiloh and Chickamauga, Garfield lingered for 80 days before dying on September 19.

President James A. Garfield is shot at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, triggering the long reform process that would eventually place the U.S. Secret Service in charge of presidential protection.

Ferdinand von Zeppelin's LZ 1, the first rigid airship of his design, makes its maiden flight over Lake Constance, opening the era of strategic airships that would dominate German reconnaissance and bombing operations in World War I.

Aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan vanish over the central Pacific Ocean during their attempted circumnavigation. The massive Navy and Coast Guard search that followed was the most expensive in U.S. history to that point.

Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan vanish over the central Pacific, triggering the largest naval search operation in history to that point and shaping future Pacific aviation infrastructure.

Lieutenant John F. Kennedy's patrol torpedo boat PT-109 is rammed and sunk by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri in the Solomon Islands. Kennedy's heroic actions saving his crew become a defining story of his later presidential campaign.

U.S. 2nd Infantry Division captures Hill 192 near Saint-Lô, a key objective in the hedgerow fighting that preceded Operation Cobra, the Allied breakout from Normandy.

President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, whose Title VI and Title VII provisions reshape hiring in the defense industrial base and the federal civil service supporting the armed forces.