On July 6, 1854, the first official meeting of the Republican Party took place in Jackson, Michigan.

In 1777, during the American Revolution, British forces captured Fort Ticonderoga.

In 1885, French scientist Louis Pasteur tested an anti-rabies vaccine on 9-year-old Joseph Meister, who had been bitten by an infected dog; the boy did not develop rabies.

In 1917, during World War I, Arab forces led by T.E. Lawrence and Auda Abu Tayi captured the port of Aqaba from the Ottoman Turks.

In 1933, the first All-Star baseball game was played at Chicago’s Comiskey Park; the American League defeated the National League, 4-2.

In 1942, Anne Frank, her parents and sister entered a “secret annex” in an Amsterdam building where they were later joined by four other people; they hid from Nazi occupiers for two years before being discovered and arrested.

In 1944, an estimated 168 people died in a fire that broke out during a performance in the main tent of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford, Connecticut.

In 1945, President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order establishing the Medal of Freedom.

In 1957, the Harry S. Truman Library, the nation’s first presidential library, was dedicated in Independence, Missouri.

In 1971, jazz trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong died in New York at age 69.

In 1988, 167 North Sea oil workers were killed when explosions and fires destroyed a drilling platform.

In 2005, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed after refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating the leak of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity (Miller was jailed for 85 days before agreeing to testify).

In 2015, Pope Francis received a hero’s welcome in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s biggest city, as he celebrated the first public Mass of his South American tour.

Today’s Birthdays: The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is 86. Former President George W. Bush is 75. Actor Nathalie Baye is 73. Actor Geoffrey Rush is 70. azz musician Rick Braun is 66. Rapper Inspectah Deck (Wu-Tang Clan) is 51. NBA star Zion Williamson is 21.