TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS SUNDAY, JULY 30, the 211th day of 2017. There are 154 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date 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 1619, the first representative assembly in America convened in Jamestown in the Virginia Colony.
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 1916, German saboteurs blew up a munitions plant on Black Tom, an island near Jersey City, N.J., killing about a dozen people.
In 1945, the Portland class heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis, having just delivered components of the atomic bomb to Tinian in the Mariana Islands, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine; only 317 out of nearly 1,200 men survived.
In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a measure making “In God We Trust” the national motto, replacing “E Pluribus Unum” (Out of many, one).
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a measure creating Medicare, which began operating 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.
In 1997, eighteen people were killed in a landslide that swept one ski lodge onto another at the Thredbo Alpine Village in southeast Australia.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actor Edd “Kookie” Byrnes is 84. Blues musician Buddy Guy is 81. Movie director Peter Bogdanovich and feminist activist Eleanor Smeal are 78. Singer Paul Anka is 76. Jazz musician David Sanborn is 72. Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and actor William Atherton are 70. Actor Jean Reno and blues singer-musician Otis Taylor are 69. Actress Delta Burke and law professor Anita Hill are 61. Singer-songwriter Kate Bush and actor Richard Burgi are 59. Movie director Richard Linklater is 57. Actor Laurence Fishburne is 56. Actress Lisa Kudrow and country musician Dwayne O’Brien are 54. Actress Vivica A. Fox is 53. Movie director Christopher Nolan is 47. Actress Hilary Swank is 43. Olympic gold medal beach volleyball player Misty May-Treanor and actress Jaime Pressly are 40. Actress Yvonne Strahovski and actor Martin Starr are 35. Actress Gina Rodriguez is 33. Actress Joey King is 18.