HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY
Today’s highlight:
On July 18, 1940, The Democratic National Convention at Chicago Stadium nominated President Franklin D. Roosevelt for an unprecedented third term in office; earlier in the day, Eleanor Roosevelt spoke to the convention, becoming the first presidential spouse to address such a gathering.
On this date:
1536: The English Parliament passed an act declaring the authority of the pope void in England.
1817: English novelist Jane Austen died in Winchester at age 41.
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; the
54th’s commander, Col.
Robert Gould Shaw, was among those who were killed.
1918: South African antiapartheid leader and president Nelson Mandela was born in the village of Mvezo.
1932: The United States and Canada signed a treaty to develop the St. Lawrence Seaway.
1947: President Harry S. Truman signed a Presidential Succession Act which placed the speaker of the House and the Senate president pro tempore next in the line of succession after the vice president.
1955: President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden and French Premier Edgar Faure held a summit in Geneva.
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.
1984: Gunman James Huberty opened fire at a McDonald’s fast food restaurant in San Ysidro, California, killing 21 people before being shot dead by police.
1994: A bomb hidden in a van destroyed a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 85. Tutsi rebels declared an end to Rwanda’s 14-week-old civil war.
Ten years ago:
One of the world’s largest mobile cranes collapsed at a refinery in southeast Houston, killing four people and injuring seven others. The epic Batman sequel “The Dark Knight,” starring Christian Bale as the caped crusader and Heath Ledger as the Joker, premiered.
Five years ago:
Once the very symbol of American industrial might, Detroit 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.
One year ago:
President Donald Trump declared that it was time to “let Obamacare fail” after the latest Republican effort to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law was blocked in the Senate. President Donald Trump announced that he would nominate former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman to be U.S. ambassador to Russia.