Today in History: Civil war erupted in Nigeria over Biafran independence.

The following are some of the major events to have occurred on July 6:

1785 - US Congress unanimously resolves the name of US currency to the "dollar" and adopts decimal coinage.

1919 – The first airship to cross the Atlantic, the British R-34, arrived in New York.

1942 – Diarist Anne Frank and her family took refuge from the Nazis in Amsterdam.

1962 – William Faulkner, U.S. novelist and Nobel Prize winner, died.

1967 – Civil war erupted in Nigeria over Biafran independence.

1971 – Louis Armstrong, jazz musician, died. His groups, the Hot Five and the Hot Seven, from 1925 to 1927, had a revolutionary impact on jazz.

1994 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin pleaded for time and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat pleaded for money when they jointly received a United Nations peace prize in Paris.

1998 – Roy Rogers, U.S. film actor known as “the singing cowboy”, died.

1999 – Labour Party leader Ehud Barak was sworn in as Israel’s new prime minister after defeating rightist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a landslide in the May election.

2005 – U.S. President George Bush celebrates his 59th birthday with the Queen of Denmark.

2008 – Rafael Nadal beat Roger Federer to become the first Spaniard in over four decades to win the Wimbledon men’s singles crown.

2013 – Train derailment in Lac Megantic, Quebec includes explosion of tank cars carrying petroleum products.

(Reuters)