Also on this date
In 1942, U.S. and other allied forces landed at Guadalcanal, marking the start of the first major allied offensive in the Pacific during World War II. (Japanese forces abandoned the island the following February.)
In 1990, President George H.W. Bush ordered U.S. troops and warplanes to Saudi Arabia to guard the oil-rich desert kingdom against a possible invasion by Iraq.
In 1998, terrorist bombs at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.
In 2000, Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore selected Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman as his running mate; Lieberman became the first Jewish candidate on a major party’s presidential ticket.
In 2008, a U.S. military jury at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base gave Osama bin Laden’s driver a 51⁄2-year sentence for aiding terrorism, making him eligible for parole in five months. The U.S. transferred Salim Hamdan to his home country of Yemen, which released him in 2009.
In 2012, Jared Lee Loughner agreed to spend the rest of his life in prison, accepting that he went on a deadly shooting rampage at an Arizona political gathering in 2011; among the victims was U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who survived being shot in the head.
In 2015, Colorado theater shooter James Holmes was spared the death penalty in favor of life in prison after a jury failed to agree on whether he should be executed for his attack in a packed movie theater that left 12 people dead.
Ten years ago: The Treasury Department announced that Secretary Timothy Geithner had told President Barack Obama he would remain on the job.
Five years ago: An accident on a 17-story waterslide at Schlitterbahn Waterpark in Kansas City, Kansas, claimed the life of a 10-year-old boy.
One year ago: Thousands of bikers poured into Sturgis, South Dakota, for the 80th Sturgis Motorcycle Rally despite fears that it could lead to a massive coronavirus outbreak. (Federal health officials later said the rally led to dozens of coronavirus cases in neighboring Minnesota; the Associated Press found that at least 290 people in 12 states tested positive for the coronavirus after attending the rally.)
Associated Press