This Day in History

On July 28, 1945, the U.S. Senate ratified the United Nations Charter by a vote of 892.

On this date:

In 1794, Maximilien Robespierre, a leading figure of the French Revolution, was sent to the guillotine.

In 1914, World War I began as Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.

In 1932, federal troops forcibly dispersed the so-called “Bonus Army” of World War I veterans who had gathered in Washington to demand payments they weren’t scheduled to receive until 1945.

In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the end of coffee rationing, which had limited people to one pound of coffee every five weeks since it began in Nov. 1942.

In 1945, a U.S. Army bomber crashed into the 79th floor of New York’s Empire State Building, killing 14 people.

In 1959, in preparation for statehood, Hawaiians voted to send the first Chinese-American, Republican Hiram L. Fong, to the U.S. Senate and the first Japanese-American, Democrat Daniel K. Inouye, to the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he was increasing the number of American troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000 “almost immediately.”

In 1976, an earthquake devastated northern China, killing at least 242,000 people, according to an official estimate.

In 1984, the Los Angeles Summer Olympics opened.

In 1989, Israeli commandos abducted a pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim cleric, Sheik Abdul-Karim Obeid, from his home in south Lebanon. (He was released in January 2004 as part of a prisoner swap.)

In 1995, a jury in Union, South Carolina, rejected the death penalty for Susan Smith, sentencing her to life in prison for drowning her two young sons (Smith will be eligible for parole in 2024).

In 2002, nine coal miners trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine in Somerset, Pennsylvania, were rescued after 77 hours underground.

Ten years ago: President Bush received Pakistan’s new prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, at the White House, praising him as a reliable partner in confronting terrorism.