TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS MONDAY, AUGUST 7, 2017

On this day in history:

1789 - The US War Department was established by the US Congress.

1928 - Dingo hunter Frederick Brooks is killed, sparking the Coniston Massacre of Australian Aborigines.

1914 - Germany invaded France.

1942 - US forces landed at Guadalcanal, marking the start of the first major allied offensive in the Pacific during the Second World War.

1947 - The balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki, which had carried a six-man crew 4300 miles across the Pacific Ocean, crashed into a reef in a Polynesian archipelago.

1960 - The Cuban Catholic Church condemned the rise of communism in Cuba. Fidel Castro then banned all religious TV and radio broadcasts.

1974 - French stuntman Philippe Petit walked a tightrope strung between the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center.

1981 - After 128 years of publication, The Washington Star ceased all operations. 1985 - Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri and Chiaki Mukai are chosen to be Japan’s first astronauts.

1987 - The presidents of five Central American nations, met in Guatemala City, and signed an 11-point agreement designed to bring peace to their region. 1987 - Lynne Cox becomes first person to swim from the United States to the Soviet Union, crossing from Little Diomede Island in Alaska to Big Diomede in the Soviet Union.

1989 - U.S. Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX) and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia.

1990 - US President George H.W. Bush ordered U.S. troops and warplanes to Saudi Arabia to guard against a possible invasion by Iraq.

1999 - The Chechnya-based Islamic International Brigade invades neighboring Dagestan. 2003 - In California, Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he would run for the office of governor.

2003 - Stephen Geppi bought a 1963 G.I. Joe prototype for $200,000.

2008 - The start of the Russo-Georgian War over the territory of South Ossetia.