Today in History.....July 3

On this day in …

* 1775, Gen. George Washington took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Mass.

* 1863, the three-day Civil War Battle of Gettysburg, Pa., ended in a major victory for the North as Confederate troops retreated

* 1898, the U.S. Navy defeated a Spanish fleet in the harbor at Santiago, Cuba, during the Spanish-American War

* 1930, Congress created the U.S. Veterans Administration

* 1976, Israel launched its daring mission to rescue about 100 passengers and Air France crew members being held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda by pro-Palestinian hijackers

* 1986, President Reagan presided over a gala ceremony in New York Harbor that saw the relighting of the renovated Statue of Liberty

* 1996, Russians went to the polls to re-elect Boris Yeltsin president over his Communist challenger, Gennady Zyuganov

* 2001, flashing the defiance that marked his 13 years in power, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic refused to enter a plea on war crimes charges in his first appearance before a U.N. tribunal at The Hague

* 2005, a NASA space probe, Deep Impact, hit its comet target as planned in a mission to learn how the solar system formed. Saudi security forces killed Moroccan Younis Mohammed Ibrahim al-Hayari, the al-Qaida terrorist group's leader in the country, during a gun battle in Riyadh