Ace Combat 4, a new aerial combat videogame, releases in Japan.

Bill Moro of Massachusetts bowls a perfect game. He is celebratory despite the day’s events.

Firefighters at the World Trade Center site raise an American flag over the rubble for the first time. Photographer Thomas E. Franklin captures the dramatic moment.

THE SOUTH TOWER OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER HAS COMPLETELY COLLAPSED. The entire building, all 110 floors, has pancaked into the ground. Massive clouds of pulverized concrete and gypsum rush through the streets, covering tens of thousands of people in dust and obscuring Lower Manhattan altogether. Father Mychal Judge, chaplain to the FDNY, is struck by fallen debris and dies instantly. He is the first confirmed and identified death today, but there must be tens of thousands of dead.

Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot releases a ballad tribute song to sunken freighter Edmund Fitzgerald, called “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

Dale Earnhardt, Jr. wins the Pepsi 400 race at Daytona International Speedway, Florida. This is an emotional win, as his father was killed on this track just three months ago. Michael Waltrip, who won that fateful Daytona 500 in February, places second today.

Continental Congress HAS SIGNED A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE!  The UNITED STATES are OFFICIALLY INDEPENDENT from BRITAIN. LIBERTY BELLS ring out throughout Philadelphia; the streets ERUPT IN ECSTASY.

After South Carolina reverses its position, Continental Congress votes to declare INDEPENDENCE from Britain, adopting a legal separation from the Crown. Charles Thomson, Secretary for Continental Congress, uses hash marks to note how many colonies voted for the severance from the Crown. John Adams writes in a letter to his wife, Abigail, that “the second day of July, 1776 will be the most memorable epoch in American history.” But although newspapers report the independence, no mass celebrations break out.