July 6 in history: Messi tax fraud sentence, Graf's last Wimbledon title, and a deadly European storm

Sports and legal milestones

On July 6, 2016, Argentine football star Lionel Messi, then of FC Barcelona, was sentenced to 21 months in prison by a Spanish court for tax fraud. The sentence was later converted to a fine. Twenty years earlier, on the same date in 1996, Steffi Graf defeated Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario to claim her seventh and final Wimbledon women's singles title.

War crimes verdict and a reopened border

In 2011, a military court in Verona, Italy, sentenced nine former German Wehrmacht members to life imprisonment in absentia. They were found guilty of participating in massacres in northern Italy during the spring of 1944. Five years earlier, in 2006, China and India reopened the Nathu La border pass on the historic Silk Road after a 44-year closure. The pass had been shut since the 1962 war between the two countries.

Deadly storms across Europe

Severe thunderstorms swept across Europe on July 6, 2001, killing at least 25 people and causing millions in property damage. In Strasbourg, France, a falling plane tree struck an open-air concert, killing 12 people. Seven more died in Germany.

Timeline of July 6 events

Birthdays and a jazz legend remembered

Notable birthdays on July 6 include former U.S. president George W. Bush and actor Sylvester Stallone, both turning 80 in 2026, actor Geoffrey Rush (75), and Swedish author Jonas Jonasson (65). The day also marks the death anniversary of jazz trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong, who died in 1971.