On this date

In 1861, the Congress of the Confederate States convened in Richmond, Va. In 1923, Mexican revolutionary leader Pancho Villa was assassinated by gunmen in Parral. In 1944, an attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb failed as the explosion only wounded the Nazi leader. In 1968, the first International Special Olympics Summer Games, organized by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, were held at Soldier Field in Chicago. In 1976, America’s Viking 1 robot spacecraft made a successful, firstever landing on Mars. In 1993, White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster Jr., 48, was found shot to death in a park near Washington, D.C.; his death was ruled a suicide.

In 2012, gunman James Holmes opened fire inside a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, during a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises,” killing 12 people and wounding 70 others. (Holmes was later convicted of murder and attempted murder, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.) Ten years ago: A roadside bomb killed four American troops in eastern Afghanistan. Five years ago: Pro-Moscow rebels piled nearly 200 bodies from downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 into four refrigerated boxcars in eastern Ukraine, and cranes at the crash scene moved big chunks of the Boeing 777, drawing condemnation from Western leaders who said the rebels were tampering with the site. One year ago: President Donald Trump escalated his threats to punish China for its trade policies, warning in an interview airing on CNBC that he was prepared to impose tariffs on all Chinese imports.