Today in History
Today’s highlight:
On July 30, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a measure making “In God We Trust” the national motto, replacing “E Pluribus Unum” (Out of many, one).
On this date:
1619: The first representative assembly in America convened in Jamestown in the Virginia Colony.
1792: The French national anthem “La Marseillaise,” by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, was first sung in Paris by troops arriving from Marseille.
1916: German saboteurs blew up a munitions plant on Black Tom, an island near Jersey City, New Jersey, killing about a dozen people.
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”
1945: The Portland class heavy cruiser 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.
1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a measure creating Medicare, which began operating the following year.
1975: Former Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in suburban Detroit; although presumed dead, his remains have never been found.
1980: Israel’s Knesset passed a law reaffirming all of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state.
2001: Robert Mueller, President George W. Bush’s choice to head the FBI, promised the Senate Judiciary Committee that if confirmed, he would move forcefully to fix problems at the agency. Mueller became FBI director on Sept. 4, 2001: A week before the 9/11 attacks.
2002: WNBA player Lisa Leslie of the Los Angeles Sparks became the first woman to dunk in a professional game, jamming on a breakaway in the first half of the Sparks’ 8273 loss to the Miami Sol.
2003: President George W. Bush took personal responsibility for the first time for using discredited intelligence in his State of the Union address, but predicted he would be vindicated for going to war against Iraq.
Ten years ago: Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, 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 unleashed a furor over racial profiling in America.
Five years ago: The House overwhelmingly approved, 420-5, a landmark bill to refurbish the Veterans Affairs Department and improve veterans’ health care.
One year ago: Zimbabwe voted for the first time without Robert Mugabe on the ballot; there were long lines at some polling stations. President Donald Trump said he’d be willing to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani “anytime” with “no preconditions.”