On this date
In 1787, inventor John Fitch demonstrated his steamboat on the Delaware River to delegates from the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. In 1910, Japan annexed Korea, which remained under Japanese control until the end of World War II. In 1932, the British Broadcasting Corp. conducted its first experimental television broadcast, using a 30-line mechanical system.
In 1972, John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile took seven employees hostage at a Chase Manhattan Bank branch in Brooklyn, N.Y., during a botched robbery; the siege, which ended with Wojtowicz’s arrest and Naturile’s killing by the FBI, inspired the 1975 movie “Dog Day Afternoon.”
In 1986, Kerr-McGee Corp. agreed to pay the estate of the late Karen Silkwood $1.38 million, settling a 10-year-old nuclear contamination lawsuit. In 1989, Black Panthers co-founder Huey P. Newton was shot to death in Oakland, Calif. (Gunman Tyrone Robinson was later sentenced to 32 years to life in prison.)
In 1992, on the second day of the Ruby Ridge siege in Idaho, an FBI sharpshooter killed Vicki Weaver, the wife of white separatist Randy Weaver. (The sharpshooter later said he was targeting the couple’s friend Kevin Harris, and didn’t see Vicki Weaver.) Ten years ago: Russia said it had pulled back forces from Georgia in accordance with an EU-brokered cease-fire agreement. Five years ago: A mysterious glitch halted trading on the Nasdaq for three hours. One year ago: Protesters and police clashed outside a convention center in Phoenix where President Donald Trump had just wrapped up his first political rally since the violence in Charlottesville, Va.