Near Sojong, South Korea, Private Kenneth Shadrick, a 19-
year-old infantryman from Skin Fork, West Virginia, became
the first American reported killed in the Korean War.

Shadrick, a member of a bazooka squad, had just fired the
weapon at a Soviet-made tank when he looked up to check
his aim and was cut down by enemy machine-gun fire.

The total U.S. dead in the Korean War numbers 36,516.

New York City born Huey Lewis sang lead and played harmonica
for his band, Huey Lewis and the News, until being forced into
retirement due to hearing loss in 2018; he also wrote or co-wrote
many of the band’s songs.

The band is perhaps best known for their third, and best-selling,
album Sports, and their contribution to the soundtrack of the
1985 feature film Back to the Future. Lewis previously played
with the band Clover from 1972 to 1979.

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776, the Continental
Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, which
proclaimed the independence of the United States of America
from Great Britain and its king.

In a ceremony held in Paris on July 4, 1884, the completed
Statue of Liberty was formally presented to the United
States ambassador as a commemoration of the friendship
between France and the U.S.

The idea for the statue was born in 1865, when the French
historian and abolitionist Édouard de Laboulaye proposed
a monument to commemorate the upcoming centennial of
U.S. independence (1876), the perseverance of American
democracy and the liberation of the nation’s slaves.

By 1870, sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi had come up
with sketches of a giant figure of a robed woman holding
a torch—possibly based on a statue he had previously
proposed for the opening of the Suez Canal.