On this date
In 1898, fighting in the Spanish-American War came to an end. In 1944, during World War II, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., eldest son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was killed with his co-pilot when their explosives-laden Navy plane blew up over England. In 1953, the Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb. In 1960, the first balloon communications satellite — the Echo 1 — was launched by the United States from Cape Canaveral. In 1977, the space shuttle Enterprise passed its first solo flight test by taking off atop a Boeing 747, separating, then touching down in California’s Mojave Desert. In 1981, IBM introduced its first personal computer, the model 5150, at a news conference in New York.
In 1985, the world’s worst single-aircraft disaster occurred as a crippled Japan Airlines Boeing 747 on a domestic flight crashed into a mountain, killing 520 people. (Four people survived.)
In 1992, after 14 months of negotiations, the United States, Mexico and Canada announced in Washington that they had concluded the North American Free Trade Agreement. In 1994, Woodstock ’94 opened in Saugerties, N.Y.
Ten years ago: A gunman opened fire in the sanctuary of a southwest Missouri church, killing a pastor and two worshipers. (A suspect later pleaded guilty to three counts of murder and four counts of assault and received three life sentences without parole, plus four 30-year sentences for the assaults.)
Five years ago: With a little British pomp and a lot of British pop, London brought the curtain down on the Olympic Games with a spectacular pageant.
One year ago: A judge in Milwaukee overturned the conviction of Brendan Dassey, who was found guilty of helping his uncle kill a woman in a case profiled in the Netflix series “Making a Murderer,” ruling that investigators coerced a confession using deceptive tactics.