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| Every Year |
July 9 is the 190th day of the year (191st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 175 days remaining until the end of the year. |
| 1776 | George Washington ordered the Declaration of Independence to be read out to members of the Continental Army in Manhattan, while thousands of British troops on Staten Island prepared for the Battle of Long Island. |
| 1811 | Explorer David Thompson posted a sign near what is now Sacajawea State Park in Washington state, claiming the Columbia District for the United Kingdom. |
| 1816 | Argentina declared independence from Spain. |
| 1918 | In Nashville, Tennessee, an inbound local train collided with an outbound express, killing 101 and injuring 171 people, making it the deadliest rail accident in United States history. |
| 1922 | Johnny Weissmuller swam the 100 meters freestyle in 58.6 seconds breaking the world swimming record and the “one minute barrier”. |
| 1937 | The silent film archives of Fox Film Corporation were destroyed by the 1937 Fox vault fire. |
| 1946 | Born today: Bon Scott (July 9, 1946–February 19, 1980, age )
He was an Australian singer, songwriter and instrumentalist, best known for being the lead vocalist and lyricist of the Australian hard rock band AC/DC from 1974 until his death in 1980. Scott was born in Forfar, Scotland, and spent his early years in Kirriemuir. He moved to Australia with his family in 1952 at the age of six, living in Melbourne for four years before settling in Fremantle, Western Australia. Scott formed his first band, The Spektors, in 1964 and became the band’s drummer and occasional lead vocalist. He performed in several other bands including The Valentines and Fraternity before replacing Dave Evans as the lead singer of AC/DC in 1974. AC/DC’s popularity grew throughout the 1970s, initially in Australia, and then internationally. Their 1979 album Highway to Hell reached the top 20 in the United States, and the band seemed on the verge of a commercial breakthrough. However, on February 19, 1980, Scott died after a night out in London. AC/DC briefly considered disbanding, but the group recruited vocalist Brian Johnson of the British glam rock band Geordie. AC/DC’s subsequent album, Back in Black, was released only five months later, and was a tribute to Scott. It went on to become the third best-selling album in history. In the July 2004 issue of Classic Rock, Scott was rated as number one in a list of the “100 Greatest Frontmen of All Time”. Hit Parader ranked Scott as fifth on their 2006 list of the “Heavy Metal’s All-Time Top 100 Vocalists“. |
| 1956 | The 7.7 Mw Amorgos earthquake shook the Cyclades island group in the Aegean Sea with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). The shaking and the destructive tsunami that followed left fifty-three people dead. A damaging M7.2 aftershock occurred minutes after the mainshock. |
| 1958 | A 7.8 Mw strike-slip earthquake in Alaska caused a landslide that produced a megatsunami. The runup from the waves reached 525 m (1,722 ft) on the rim of Lituya Bay; five people were killed. |
| 1993 | The Parliament of Canada passed the Nunavut Act leading to the 1999 creation of Nunavut, dividing the Northwest Territories into arctic (Inuit) and sub-arctic (Dene) lands based on a plebiscite. |
| 2011 | South Sudan gained independence and seceded from Sudan. |
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