July 8 Birthday
On July 8, 1776, the Liberty Bell rang from the tower of the Pennsylvania State House to summon citizens for the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence. The bell had been cast in 1751 and inscribed with the words "Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants Thereof" — from the Book of Leviticus. The famous crack appeared in the 1840s. The bell has not been rung since 1846, when it cracked further during a George Washington's birthday celebration. It is now displayed in the Liberty Bell Center in Philadelphia. The Roswell incident was reported on July 8, 1947, when the Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release stating that it had recovered a "flying disc." The statement was retracted within hours — the military said the object was a weather balloon. In 1994, the Air Force published a report confirming that the debris was from a classified balloon project called Project Mogul, designed to detect Soviet nuclear tests. Despite this, Roswell became the center of UFO conspiracy theories. The town of Roswell, New Mexico, has built a tourist industry around the incident. People born on July 8 fall under the zodiac sign of Cancer. The birthstone is Ruby and the birth flower is Larkspur. Historical events on July 8 include 1776: Liberty Bell rings for first public reading of Declaration of Independence, 1889: Wall Street Journal first published, 1947: Roswell Daily Record reports UFO crash ("RAAF Captures Flying Saucer"). Famous people born on July 8 include John D. Rockefeller (1839), Kevin Bacon (1958), Billy Crudup (1968).