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Map of troop positions during the Battle of Helena

The Battle of Helena was fought on July 4, 1863, during the American Civil War. Union troops had been using Helena, Arkansas, as a base of operations since July 1862. More than 7,500 Confederate troops led by Theophilus H. Holmes attempted to capture Helena in hopes of relieving some of the pressure on the Confederate army besieged in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Helena was defended by about 4,100 Union troops led by Benjamin Prentiss, manning one fort and four batteries. Differing interpretations of the order by Holmes to attack at daylight resulted in James Fleming Fagan's troops attacking Battery D unsupported, and Sterling Price's attack against the Union center was made after Fagan's had largely fizzled out. To the north, Confederate cavalry commanded by John S. Marmaduke and Lucius M. Walker failed to act in concert and accomplished little. The assaults failed, and Vicksburg fell the same day. Later in the year, Union troops used Helena as a staging ground for the Little Rock campaign. (Full article...)

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In the news

Jair Bolsonaro

In Brazil, the Superior Electoral Court bars former president Jair Bolsonaro (pictured) from running for political office until 2030 for abuse of power before the 2022 general election.
Riots break out across France after a 17-year-old is fatally shot by police in Paris.
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In China, an explosion at a restaurant in Yinchuan kills 31 people.

On this day

July 4: Republic Day in the Philippines (1946); Independence Day in the United States (1776)

The Brazilian cruiser Bahia

1054 – Chinese astronomers recorded the sudden appearance of a "guest star", later identified as the supernova that created the Crab Nebula.
1643 – First English Civil War: Royalist forces defeated the Parliamentarians at the Battle of Burton Bridge, securing a crossing of the River Trent for a convoy of supplies travelling with Queen Henrietta Maria.
1943 – The aircraft carrying Władysław Sikorski, prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile, crashed off Gibraltar, killing him and fifteen others and leading to several conspiracy theories.
1945 – The Brazilian cruiser Bahia (pictured) was accidentally sunk by one of its own crewmen, killing more than 300 people.
1988 – Kylie Minogue's first album, Kylie, was released, and went on to top the charts in the UK and New Zealand.

Brian Twyne (d. 1644)
Suzanne Lenglen (d. 1938)
Swastima Khadka (b. 1995)
Barthélemy Mukenge (d. 2018)

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Today's featured picture

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with more than 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and laboratories, as well as more than 100 countries. The LHC lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference and as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva. On 4 July 2012, CERN announced the discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC, after a 40-year search for its existence. This photograph shows the interior of a section of the LHC's tunnel (sector 3–4). The collider's dipole magnets are painted in blue to protect them from rust.

Photograph credit: Maximilien Brice

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