NOW YOU KNOW

• On July 1, 1863, the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg, in whichConfederate Gen. Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia on an invasion of the North, began in Pennsylvania.
• On July 2, 1937, aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first round-the-world flight along the equator.
• On July 4, 1960, America's 50-star flag, honoring Hawaiian statehood, was officially unfurled.
• On July 5, 1810, American showman and promoter (as well as author and politician) Phineas T. Barnum was born in Bethel, Conn.
• On July 6, 1885, French scientist Louis Pasteur tested an anti-rabies vaccine on 9-year-old Joseph Meister, who had been bitten by an infected dog; the boy did not develop rabies.
• On July 7, 1919, the first Transcontinental Motor Convoy, in which a U.S. Army convoy of motorized vehicles crossed the United States, departed Washington, D.C. (The trip ended in San Francisco on Sept. 6, 1919.)
• On July 9, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was read aloud to Gen. George Washington's troops in New York.
• On July 11, 1859, Big Ben, the great bell inside the famous London clock tower, chimed for the first time. (The clock itself had been keeping time since May 31.)
• On July 12, 1960, the Etch A Sketch Magic Screen drawing toy, invented by French electrician Andre Cassagnes, was first produced by the Ohio Art Co.
• On July 13, 1985, "Live Aid", an international rock concert in London, Philadelphia, Moscow and Sydney, took place to raise money for Africa's starving people.
• On July 14, 1933, all German political parties, except the Nazi Party, were outlawed.
• On July 15, 1985, a shockingly gaunt-looking Rock Hudson appeared at a news conference with actress Doris Day.  It was later revealed Hudson was suffering from AIDS.
• On July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, died when their single-engine plane, piloted by Kennedy, plunged into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha's Vineyard, Mass.
• On July 18, 1969, a car driven by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha's Vineyard; his passanger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned.
• On July 19, 1985, Christa McAuliffe was chosen to be the first schoolteacher to ride aboard the space shuttle.  She and six other crew members died when the Challenger exploded after liftoff in Jan. 1986.
• On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon after landing their lunar module.
• On July 21, 1959, the NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered merchant ship, was christened by first lady Mamie Eisenhower at Camden, N.J.
• On July 22, 1933, American aviator Wiley Post completed the first solo flight around the world as he returned to New York after traveling for seven days, 18 3/4 hours.
• On July 23, 1904, according to some accounts, Charles E. Menches conceived the idea of filling a pastry cone with two scoops of ice-cream and thereby invented the ice-cream cone.
• On July 25, 1960, a Woolworth's store in Greensboro, N.C., that had been the scene of a sit-in protest against its whites-only lunch counter dropped its segregation policy as it served three of its black employees at the counter.
• On July 26, 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed into law the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
• On July 27, 1940, Bugs Bunny made his "official" debut in the Warner Bros. animated cartoon "A Wild Hare".
• On July 28, 2002, nine coal miners trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine in Somerset County were rescued after 77 hours underground.
• On July 29, 1914, transcontinental telephone service began with the first test phone conversation between New York and San Francisco.
• On July 30, 1945, during World War 2, the heavy crusier USS Indianapolis, which had just delivered components for the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.