July 4, 1976

Major celebrations throughout the country marked America’s 200th birthday. In Washington, D.C., 33 tons of fireworks were exploded in the sky above the Washington Monument, along with Laser beams that spelled out " 1776-1976, Happy Birthday, USA." In New York, a succession of tall sailing ships from all over the world sailed up the Hudson River.

July 5, 1687

The Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Principia Mathematica for short) by Isaac Newton published on July 5, 1687. It contains the statement of Newton's laws of motion forming the foundation of classical mechanics as well as his law of universal gravitation.

July 6, 1983

Tony Blair, Member of Parliament for the constituency of Sedgefield, gives his maiden speech in Parliament.

July 6, 1942 : Frank family takes refuge

In Nazi-occupied Holland, 13-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and
her family are forced to take refuge in a secret sealed-off area of an
Amsterdam warehouse. The day before, Anne's older sister, Margot, had
received a call-up notice to be deported to a Nazi "work camp."

Born in Germany on June 12, 1929, Anne Frank fled to Amsterdam with
her family in 1933 to escape Nazi persecution. In the summer of 1942,
with the German occupation of Holland underway, 12-year-old Anne began
a diary relating her everyday experiences, her relationship with her
family and friends, and observations about the increasingly dangerous
world around her. On July 6, fearing deportation to a Nazi
concentration camp, the Frank family took shelter in a factory run by
Christian friends. During the next two years, under the threat of
murder by the Nazi officers patrolling just outside the warehouse,
Anne kept a diary that is marked by poignancy, humor, and insight.

On August 4, 1944, just two months after the successful Allied landing
at Normandy, the Nazi Gestapo discovered the Frank's "Secret Annex."
The Franks were sent to the Nazi death camps along with two of the
Christians who had helped shelter them, and another Jewish family and
a single Jewish man with whom they had shared the hiding place. Anne
and most of the others ended up at the Auschwitz concentration camp in
Poland. Anne's diary was left behind, undiscovered by the Nazis.

In early 1945, with the Soviet liberation of Poland underway, Anne was
moved with her sister, Margot, to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
in Germany. Suffering under the deplorable conditions of the camp, the
two sisters caught typhus and died in early March. After the war,
Anne's diary was discovered undisturbed in the Amsterdam hiding place
and in 1947 was translated into English and published. An instant
best-seller and eventually translated into more than 30 languages, The
Diary of Anne Frank has served as a literary testament to the six
million Jews, including Anne herself, who were silenced in the
Holocaust.

July 7, 1930 : Building of Hoover Dam begins

On this day in 1930, construction of the Hoover Dam begins. Over the
next five years, a total of 21,000 men would work ceaselessly to
produce what would be the largest dam of its time, as well as one of
the largest manmade structures in the world.


Although the dam would take only five years to build, its construction
was nearly 30 years in the making. Arthur Powell Davis, an engineer
from the Bureau of Reclamation, originally had his vision for the
Hoover Dam back in 1902, and his engineering report on the topic
became the guiding document when plans were finally made to begin the
dam in 1922.


Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States and a
committed conservationist, played a crucial role in making Davis'
vision a reality. As secretary of commerce in 1921, Hoover devoted
himself to the erection of a high dam in Boulder Canyon, Colorado. The
dam would provide essential flood control, which would prevent damage
to downstream farming communities that suffered each year when snow
from the Rocky Mountains melted and joined the Colorado River.
Further, the dam would allow the expansion of irrigated farming in the
desert, and would provide a dependable supply of water for Los Angeles
and other southern California communities.


Even with Hoover's exuberant backing and a regional consensus around
the need to build the dam, Congressional approval and individual state
cooperation were slow in coming. For many years, water rights had been
a source of contention among the western states that had claims on the
Colorado River. To address this issue, Hoover negotiated the Colorado
River Compact, which broke the river basin into two regions with the
water divided between them. Hoover then had to introduce and
re-introduce the bill to build the dam several times over the next few
years before the House and Senate finally approved the bill in 1928.


In 1929, Hoover, now president, signed the Colorado River Compact into
law, claiming it was "the most extensive action ever taken by a group
of states under the provisions of the Constitution permitting compacts
between states."


Once preparations were made, the Hoover Dam's construction sprinted
forward: The contractors finished their work two years ahead of
schedule and millions of dollars under budget. Today, the Hoover Dam
is the second highest dam in the country and the 18th highest in the
world. It generates enough energy each year to serve over a million
people, and stands, in Hoover Dam artist Oskar Hansen's words, as "a
monument to collective genius exerting itself in community efforts
around a common need or ideal."