On this day, July 11 …

1914: Babe Ruth makes his Major League Baseball debut, pitching the Boston Red Sox to a 4-3 victory over the Cleveland Naps (now Indians).

Also on this day:

  • 1798: The U.S. Marine Corps is formally re-established by a congressional act that also creates the U.S. Marine Band.
  • 1804: Vice President Aaron Burr mortally wounds former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton during a pistol duel in Weehawken, N.J.
  • 1859: Big Ben, the great bell inside the famous London clock tower, chimes for the first time.
  • 1937: Composer George Gershwin dies at a Los Angeles hospital of a brain tumor at age 38.
  • 1952: The Republican National Convention, meeting in Chicago, nominates Dwight D. Eisenhower for president and Richard M. Nixon for vice president.
  • 1955: The U.S. Air Force Academy swears in its first class of cadets at its temporary quarters at Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado.
  • 1960: The novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee is first published by J.B. Lippincott and Co.
  • 1972: The World Chess Championship opens as grandmasters Bobby Fischer of the United States and defending champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union begin play in Reykjavik, Iceland. (Fischer would win after 21 games.)
  • 2015: Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico’s most notorious drug lord, escapes from a maximum-security prison through an underground tunnel.
  • 2018: John Schnatter, founder of Papa John's, resigns as chairman of the pizza chain, and apologizes for using a racial slur during a conference call in May.