On this date
In 1766, Britain repealed the Stamp Act of 1765. In 1925, the Tri-State Tornado struck southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois and southwestern Indiana, resulting in some 700 deaths.
In 1937, in America’s worst school disaster, nearly 300 people, most of them children, were killed in a natural gas explosion at the New London Consolidated School in Rusk County, Texas.
In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the War Relocation Authority, which was put in charge of evacuating “persons whose removal is necessary in the interests of national security,” with Milton S. Eisenhower (the youngest brother of Dwight D. Eisenhower) as its director.
In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Hawaii statehood bill. (Hawaii became a state on Aug. 21, 1959.)
In 1962, France and Algerian rebels signed the Evian Accords, a cease-fire agreement that took effect the next day, ending the Algerian War.
In 1965, the first spacewalk took place as Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov went outside his Voskhod 2 capsule, secured by a tether.
Ten years ago: Pakistan’s national cricket team coach, Bob Woolmer, 58, was found dead in his hotel room in Kingston, Jamaica, during cricket’s World Cup tournament. (An inquest into Woolmer’s death ended with the Jamaican jury unable to reach a ruling on the cause.)
Five years ago: Mitt Romney scored an overwhelming win in Puerto Rico’s Republican presidential primary, trouncing chief rival Rick Santorum.
One year ago: A jury in St. Petersburg, Fla., sided with ex-pro wrestler Hulk Hogan, awarding him $115 million in compensatory damages in his sex tape lawsuit against Gawker Media. (Three days later, the jury awarded $25 million in punitive damages; Gawker, which ended up going bankrupt, finally settled with Hogan for $31 million.)