July 4

Hermann Cohen, a founder of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism and a leading Jewish philosopher, was born to a cantor's family in Coswig, Anhalt.

Hayim Nahman Bialik, a pioneer of modern Hebrew poetry later regarded as Israel's national poet, died in Vienna following surgery.

Israeli forces flew some 4,000 km to Entebbe airport in Uganda and freed most of the hostages held after the hijacking of an Air France flight.

The Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, adopted the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming the thirteen American colonies' separation from British rule.

Swami Vivekananda, who introduced Vedanta and Yoga to the West and founded the Ramakrishna Mission, died at Belur Math near Kolkata at the age of 39.

Swami Prabhavananda, a monk of the Ramakrishna Order who founded the Vedanta Society of Southern California and co-translated the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads into English, died in California.

Marie Curie, twice a Nobel laureate for her research on radioactivity and the discovery of the elements polonium and radium, died on 4 July 1934 at a sanatorium in Passy, France.

On 4 July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS teams at CERN announced a new particle near 125 GeV consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson, connected to how fundamental particles acquire mass.