Today’s Highlight in History:
On July 30, 1945, during World War II, the Portland class heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis, which had just delivered components for the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine; only 316 out of some 1,200 men survived the sinking and shark-infested waters.
On this date:
In 1792, the French national anthem “La Marseillaise”, by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, was first sung in Paris by troops arriving from Marseille.
In 1864, during the Civil War, Union forces tried to take Petersburg, Va., by exploding a gunpowder-filled mine under Confederate defense lines; the attack failed.
In 1918, poet Joyce Kilmer, a sergeant in the 165th U.S. Infantry Regiment, was killed during the Second Battle of the Marne in World War I. (Kilmer is perhaps best remembered for his poem “Trees.”)
In 1932, the Summer Olympic Games opened in Los Angeles.
In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill creating a women’s auxiliary agency in the Navy known as “Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service” — WAVES for short.
In 1960, the recently founded American Football League saw its first pre-season game, in which the Boston Patriots defeated the host Buffalo Bills 28-7.
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Medicare bill, which went into effect the following year.
In 1975, former Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in suburban Detroit; although presumed dead, his remains have never been found.
In 1980, Israel’s Knesset passed a law reaffirming all of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state. The Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu became independent of joint British-French rule.
In 1990, British Conservative Party lawmaker Ian Gow was killed in a bombing claimed by the Irish Republican Army.
Ten years ago: President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela won a fresh six-year term in a landslide re-election.
Five years ago: President George W. Bush was pronounced “fit for duty” after a checkup that showed that the 59-year-old commander-in-chief, an avid mountain bike rider, had lost eight pounds since his last physical exam in December 2004.
One year ago: Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the Cambridge, Mass. officer who arrested him for disorderly conduct at his home, Sgt. James Crowley, had beers with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden at White House to discuss the dispute that unleashed a furor over racial profiling in America.
(AP)
