On this date
In 1792, the French national anthem “La Marseillaise,” by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, was first sung in Paris by troops arriving from Marseille.
In 1916, German saboteurs blew up a munitions plant on Black Tom, an island near Jersey City, N.J., killing about a dozen people.
In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill creating a women’s auxiliary agency in the Navy known as “Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service” — WAVES for short.
In 1945, the USS Indianapolis, having just delivered components of the atomic bomb to Tinian in the Mariana Islands, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine; only 317 out of nearly 1,200 men survived.
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a measure creating Medicare, which began operating the following year.
In 1975, former Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in suburban Detroit; although Hoffa is presumed dead, his remains have never been found.
In 2001, Robert Mueller, President George W. Bush’s choice to head the FBI, promised the Senate Judiciary Committee that if confirmed, he would move to fix problems at the agency. (Mueller became FBI director on Sept. 4, 2001, a week before the Sept. 11 attacks.)
Ten years ago: Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and James Crowley, the Cambridge, Mass., police officer who’d arrested him for disorderly conduct at his home, had beers with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden at the White House to discuss the dispute that sparked a furor over racial profiling.
Five years ago: The House approved, 420-5, a bill to refurbish the Veterans Affairs Department and improve veterans’ health care.
One year ago: President Donald Trump said he’d be willing to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani “anytime” with “no preconditions.”