View Historical Events by Day: What Happened on July 11 in History?

The Chinese admiral Zheng He, sets sail on his first voyage to explore the Indian Ocean. He commanded the largest and most advanced fleet the world had ever seen with 317 ships and nearly 28,000 crew. The voyages were intended to showcase the Ming Dynasty's power and culture and bring foreign treasures back to the Ming court, establish diplomatic relations, and engage in trade. Departing from Nanjing, the fleet sailed to Southeast Asia including Champa (Vietnam), Java, and Malacca, before crossing the Indian Ocean to reach the southwest coast of India, specifically Calicut and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Zheng made a total of seven voyages. He died on the return of the seventh trip in 1433 and was buried at sea.  More

The United States takes possession of Detroit from the British during the American Revolutionary War, in accordance with the terms of the Jay Treaty, officially the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, was an agreement signed in 1794 between the United States and Great Britain. More

The U.S. Marine Corps, initially established on November 10, 1775, as the Continental Marines and disbanded after the Revolutionary War is formally re-established under President John Adams. Marines saw action in the quasi-war with France, landed in Santo Domingo, and took part in many operations against the Barbary pirates along the shores of Tripoli. The birth date of the United States Marine Corps is celebrated as November 10, 1975 More

Vice President Aaron Burr fatally shoots his long-time political antagonist Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, a leading Federalist and the chief architect of America’s political economy, died the following day. More

The Niagara Movement, a group of 59 well know African American businessmen begin their three day meeting on the Canadian side of the Niagara Falls. W. E. B. Du Bois was named general secretary and the group split into various committees. They renounced Booker T. Washington's accommodation policies set forth in his famed "Atlanta Compromise" speech ten years earlier. The Niagara Movement's manifesto is, in the words of Du Bois, "We want full manhood suffrage and we want it now.... We are men! We want to be treated as men. And we shall win." The movement became a forerunner of the NAACP. More

The novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" by American author Harper Lee is published and becomes an immediate bestseller. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 and it is now widely recognized as a classic of modern American literature. The story is told from the perspective of a young girl and is set in the 1930's South. It explores themes of racial injustice and moral growth with its characters loosely based on Lee's observations of her family, her neighbors and an event that occurred in 1936 near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, when she was ten. Harper Lee died on February 2016 when she was 89 years old.

Skylab, America's first space station reenters Earth's atmosphere, to a premature and uncontrolled descent with debris falling over the Indian Ocean and parts of Western Australia. The station's orbit had deteriorated due to increased solar activity; While no injuries were reported, the event captured global attention and highlighted the challenges of managing space debris. The space station was launched in May 14,1973.