July 2 is the 183rd day of the year.
Events:
1645 – Battle of Alford: Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
1698 – Thomas Savery patents the first steam engine.
1822 – Thirty-five slaves are hanged in South Carolina, including Denmark Vesey, after being accused of organizing a slave rebellion.
1897 – British-Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi obtains a patent for radio in London.
1900 – The first Zeppelin flight takes place on Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen, Germany.
1976 – Fall of the Republic of Vietnam; Communist North Vietnam declares their union to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
2002 – Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly solo around the world nonstop in a balloon.
Births:
1714 – Christoph Willibald Gluck, German composer (d. 1787)
1877 – Hermann Hesse, German-born Swiss poet, novelist, and painter, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1962)
1904 – René Lacoste, French tennis player and businessman, created the polo shirt (d. 1996)
1916 – Ken Curtis, American actor and singer (d. 1991)
1922 – Pierre Cardin, Italian-French fashion designer
1986 – Lindsay Lohan, American actress and singer
Deaths:
1566 – Nostradamus, French astrologer and author (b. 1503)
1778 – Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Swiss philosopher and composer (b. 1712)
1977 – Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-born novelist and critic (b. 1899)
2006 – Jan Murray, American comedian, actor, and game show host (b. 1916)
2011 – Itamar Franco, Brazilian engineer and politician, 33rd President of Brazil (b. 1930)
Holidays and observances:
Feast of the Visitation (Anglicanism; Levoča at Mariánska hora)
Flag Day (Curaçao)
Palio di Provenzano (Siena, Italy)
Police Day (Azerbaijan)
World UFO Day