July 11

1274 Robert I, popularly known as Robert the Bruce, was born on July 11, 1274. He was likely born at Turnberry Castle in Ayrshire, the head of his mother's earldom. His mother was by all accounts a formidable woman who, legend would have it, kept Robert Bruce's father captive until he agreed to marriage. A key figure in the Wars of Scottish Independence, his coronation took place in defiance of the English claims of suzerainty over Scotland after the execution of Sir William Wallace.

1656 Ann Austin and Mary Fisher were the first Quakers to arrive in America. The pair had sailed from Barbados, where the Quakers had established a center for missionary work. As soon as their ship docked in Boston Harbor in the Massachusetts Bay colony on July 11, 1656, they were arrested and locked up for five weeks in a dark cell and ordered to be given no food or water. Ann Austin and Mary Fisher were eventually deported back to England five weeks later.

1735 Dwarf planet Pluto's orbit is elliptical and inclined relative to the ecliptic, so it crosses the orbit of Neptune every 248 years or so. It last moved inside the orbit of Neptune in 1979 and crossed back over Neptune's orbit again in 1999. Mathematical calculations suggest that it was on July 11, 1735 when Pluto previously moved inside the orbit of Neptune.

High-resolution image of Pluto

1767 John Quincy Adams, the sixth US president, was born on July 11, 1767 at Braintree, (now Quincy), Massachusetts, U.S.). He was named for his mother's maternal grandfather, Colonel John Quincy, after whom Quincy, Massachusetts, is named. He was the son of the second President, of the United States, President John Adams and Abigail Adams. John Quincy Adams did not attend school, but was tutored by his cousin James Thax and his father's law clerk, Nathan Rice.

1796 The United States took possession of Detroit from Great Britain on July 11, 1796. After the US gained independence, following the American Revolutionary War, the British were still occupying forts in the Great Lakes region, including at Detroit. Under the terms of the Jay Treaty, which established the northern border with Canada, Britain ceded Detroit along with other territory in the area.

First page of the Jay Treaty

1801 French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons made his first comet discovery on July 11, 1801. He observed the comet now known as 2P/Encke, which is named after Johann Franz Encke, who later calculated its orbit. This marked the beginning of Pons' remarkable career as a comet hunter. Over the course of the next 27 years, Pons discovered a total of 37 comets, which remains the highest number of comet discoveries by any individual in history

1804 Former US Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton was shot by US Vice President Aaron Burr in a pistol duel near Weehawken, New Jersey on July 11, 1804. The duel was the culmination of a long and bitter rivalry between the two men. Hamilton was carried to the home of William Bayard on the Manhattan shore, where he died the next day.

Drawing of the Hamilton - Burr duel

1818 After a 20 year relationship with the Irish actress Dorothea Bland, the future William IV of the United Kingdom married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen on July 11, 1818, at Kew Palace in Surrey. William had no surviving children from his marriage to Adelaide, but he was survived by eight of the ten illegitimate children he had by Mrs Jordan including Lady Elizabeth FitzClarence, from whom former English Prime Minister David Cameron is directly descended.

1830 The national flag of Uruguay has a field of nine equal horizontal stripes alternating white and blue. It had 19 stripes until July 11, 1830, when a new law reduced the number of stripes to nine. The reason for the change is not entirely clear, but it is thought that the 19 stripes were too difficult to see from a distance.

1848 London Waterloo station, Britain's busiest railway station by passenger usage, was opened by the London and South Western Railway on July 11, 1848. It was named after. the nearby Waterloo Bridge over the Thames. The bridge was named after the Battle of Waterloo, which was fought in 1815.

1859 Big Ben, the bell in the Palace of Westminster's clock tower in London, was cast in April 1858 by Whitechapel Bell Foundry after the original bell had cracked during testing. Six weeks after it started keeping time. Big Ben rang for the first time on July 11, 1859. The 30,300 lb (13.76 tonne) bell is known as ‘Big Ben’ after Benjamin Hall, First Commissioner of Works at the time.

Big Ben 1858

1877 After his successful invention of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell devoted the rest of his life to the education of deaf and dumb children. One of his pupils was Mabel Hubbard, a bright, attractive girl who was ten years his junior. She became the object of Bell's affection and they married on July 11, 1877 in the Cambridge home of her parents. He gave her 99 percent of his Bell Telephone company shares as a wedding gift. They lived together happily for 45 years.

1893 After many unsuccessful attempts, July 11, 1893, is recorded as the date on which Kokichi Mikimoto created the first cultured pearl. Mikimoto created it on the Japanese island of Ojima, which became a center for pearl production and had its name changed to Mikimoto Pearl Island.

Mikimoto

1921 On July 11, 1921, Former President of the United States William Howard Taft was sworn in as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, making him the only person to ever hold both positions. Taft served until a month before his death nine years later. He posted a conservative record, and reformed the court's administration.

1924 The Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire tells the true story of the Scottish Olympic athlete and later missionary Eric Liddell who refused to run on the Sabbath in the 1924 Olympics in the heats for the 100 meters, his favored event. Instead the devout Scot, who ran for God, entered the 400 meters which he proceeded to win on July 11, 1924.

1930 On his first visit to England, Australian cricketer Don Bradman established a Test record on July 11, 1930, by scoring 334 runs in one innings at Headingly. Bradman still holds the record for the most runs in a single day’s play in a test match - 309 during his 334 innings against England.

1934 Fashion designer Giorgio Armani was born on July 11, 1934 in the northern Italian town of Piacenza to a humble family. Giorgio was curious about the human form from an early age. He recalled to The Guardian that as a child, he would "make dolls out of mud with a coffee bean hidden inside." After studying medicine at the University of Milan for two years, Armani pursued a career in photography before going to work at La Rinascente department store in Milan in the mid-1950s.

1937 A live-long bachelor, the songwriter and composer George Gershwin fell in love with Paulette Goddard, then married to Charlie Chaplin. He was heartbroken that she would not leave her husband for him. When he fell ill in June 1938, it was written off as stress. George Gershwin died, aged 38, on the morning of July 11, 1937. The cause of death was a brain tumor, five hours after a failed surgical attempt to remove it. Funerals were held in both Hollywood and New York.

1960 Nelle Harper Lee was working as an airline reservation clerk when some friends offered to support her for a year while she pursued writing full-time as a Christmas present. She left her job and penned the first draft of her story about life in the South, which was to become To Kill a Mockingbird. Ultimately, Lee spent over 30 months writing her book, which was published on July 11, 1960 and went on to be regarded as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

1962 The first historic ‘space-vision’ pictures to be transmitted directly across the Atlantic flashed onto British TV screens at 1am on July 11, 1962. Viewers saw the pictures — relayed from America to the satellite Telstar 2,000 miles above the ocean — for 30 seconds.

1966 The world record for fasting is held by a 456 pound (207 kg) man who was able to survive due to his excess fat. Starting in June 1965, Scotsman Angus Barbieri fasted for 382 days consuming only  tea, coffee, sparkling water and vitamins  He ended his fast on July 11, 1966, when he reached his goal weight of 180 pounds (82 kg).

1980 On July 11, 1980, Glenn K. Tripp hijacked Northwest flight 608 at Seattle-Tacoma Airport, demanding $600,000 two parachutes, and the assassination of his boss. He had his drink spiked with Valium by a flight attendant, and after a 10 hour standoff, lowered his ransom to three cheeseburgers and a head start on a getaway.

1987 July 11, 1987 was designated "The Day of Five Billion" by the United Nations, marking its estimate of the day on which the world's population would pass that figure. Matej Gašpar from Zagreb, Croatia (then SR Croatia, SFR Yugoslavia), was chosen as the symbolic 5-billionth person concurrently alive on Earth. The world population is estimated to have reached one billion in 1804, with two, three and four billion in 1927, 1960 and 1974 respectively.