TODAY IN HISTORY
On July 18, 2013, Detroit, which was once the very symbol of American industrial might, became the biggest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy, its finances ravaged and its neighborhoods hollowed out by a long, slow decline in population and auto manufacturing.
Also on this date
In 1863, during the Civil War, Union troops spearheaded by the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, made up of Black soldiers, charged Confederate-held Fort Wagner on Morris Island, S.C. The Confederates were able to repel the Northerners, who suffered heavy losses.
In 1918, South African anti-apartheid leader and president Nelson Mandela was born in the village of Mvezo.
In 1964, nearly a week of rioting erupted in New York’s Harlem neighborhood following the fatal police shooting of a Black teenager, James Powell, two days earlier.
In 1969, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., left a party on Chappaquiddick
Island near Martha’s Vineyard with Mary Jo Kopechne, 28; some time later, Kennedy’s car went off a bridge into the water. Kennedy was able to escape, but Kopechne drowned.
In 1984, gunman James Huberty opened fire at a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, California, killing 21 people before being shot dead by police.
In 1986, the world got its first look at the wreckage of the RMS Titanic resting on the ocean floor as videotape of the British luxury liner, which sank in 1912, was released by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
In 1994, Tutsi rebels declared an end to Rwanda’s 14-week-old civil war.
In 2018, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Russia was continuing to use fake news, propaganda and covert operations to sow discord in the United States.
Ten years ago: Pakistan and Afghanistan sealed a landmark trade deal in the presence of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who pushed the two nations to work together against al-Qaida and the Taliban. Five years ago: Saudi Arabia announced it had broken up planned Islamic State attacks and arrested more than 400 suspects in an antiterrorism sweep, a day after a blast in Iraq killed more than 100 people in one of the country’s deadliest single attacks since U.S. troops pulled out in 2011.
One year ago: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said temperatures in June, worldwide, were the hottest on record for that month.