Also on this date
In 1914,
Germany declared war on France at the onset of World War I.
In 1949,
the National Basketball Association was formed as a merger of the Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League.
In 1966,
comedian Lenny Bruce, whose raunchy brand of satire and dark humor landed him in trouble with the law, was found dead in his Los Angeles home; he was 40.
In 1981,
U.S. air traffic controllers went on strike, despite a warning from President Ronald Reagan they would be fired, which they were.
In 2004,
the Statue of Liberty pedestal in New York City reopened to the public for the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks.
In 2005,
14 Marines from a Reserve unit in Ohio were killed in a roadside bombing in Iraq.
In 2014,
Israel withdrew most of its ground troops from the Gaza Strip in an apparent winding down of a nearly monthlong operation against Hamas that had left more than 1,800 Palestinians and more than 60 Israelis dead.
In 2019,
a gunman opened fire at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, leaving 22 people dead; prosecutors said Patrick Crusius targeted Mexicans in hopes of scaring Latinos into leaving the U.S., and that he had outlined the plot in a screed published online shortly before the attack. (A man who was wounded in the shooting died in April 2020 after months in the hospital, raising the death toll to 23. Crusius has pleaded not guilty to state murder charges; he also faces federal hate crime and gun charges.)
Ten years ago:
The Muscular Dystrophy Association announced that Jerry Lewis was no longer its national chairman and would not be appearing on the Labor Day telethon.
Five years ago:
President Barack Obama cut short the sentences of 214 federal inmates, including 67 life sentences, in what the White House called the largest batch of commutations on a single day in more than a century.
One year ago:
The St. Louis Cardinals became the second team sidelined by the coronavirus since the shortened baseball season began July 23; seven Cardinals players and six staff members tested positive, causing the team’s four-game series at Detroit to be postponed. (The Miami Marlins would resume play the following day after missing a week of games.)