The Soyuz 11 spacecraft experienced uncontrolled decompression during preparations for reentry, killing Soviet cosmonauts Vladislav Volkov, Georgy Dobrovolsky and Viktor Patsayev—the only human deaths to have occurred in space.
Actress Jayne Mansfield (pictured), her boyfriend Sam Brody, and their driver were killed in a car accident outside of New Orleans, while her children Miklós, Zoltán, and Mariska Hargitay escaped with only minor injuries.
The United States Army Air Corps aircraft Bird of Paradise landed at Wheeler Field on the Hawaiian island of Oahu to complete the first transpacific flight.
More than 50,000 Union and Confederate veterans gathered at the Gettysburg Battlefield, the largest combined reunion of American Civil War veterans ever held.
Hyde Park and several other Illinois townships voted to be annexed by Chicago, forming the largest city by area in the United States and the second-largest by population.
A passenger train fell through an open swing bridge into the Richelieu River near present-day Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Quebec, killing as many as 99 people and injuring 100 others in Canada's worst railway accident.