Highlights in history
• In 1794, French revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre was overthrown and placed under arrest; he was executed the following day.
• In 1909, during the first official test of the U.S. Army’s first airplane, Orville Wright flew himself and a passenger, Lt. Frank Lahm, above Fort Myer, Virginia, for one hour and 12 minutes.
• In 1919, race-related rioting erupted in Chicago; the violence, which claimed the lives of 23 Blacks and 15 whites, lasted until Aug. 3.
• In 1946, American author, poet and publisher Gertrude Stein, 72, died in Neuilly-sur-seine, France.
• In 1953, the Korean War armistice was signed at Panmunjom, ending three years of fighting.
• In 1960, Vice President Richard M. Nixon was nominated for president on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in Chicago.
• In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted 27-11 to adopt the first of three articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon, charging he had personally engaged in a course of conduct designed to obstruct justice in the Watergate case.
• In 1976, Air Force veteran Ray Brennan became the first person to die of so-called “Legionnaire’s Disease” following an American Legion convention in Philadelphia.
• In 1980, on day 267 of the Iranian hostage crisis, the deposed Shah of Iran died at a military hospital outside Cairo,
Egypt, at age 60.
• In 1996, terror struck the Atlanta Olympics as a pipe bomb exploded at Centennial Olympic Park, directly killing one person and injuring 111. (Anti-government extremist Eric Rudolph later pleaded guilty to the bombing, exonerating security guard Richard Jewell, who had been wrongly suspected.)
• In 2003, comedian Bob Hope died in Toluca Lake, Calif. at age 100. Lance Armstrong won a record-tying fifth straight title in the Tour de France. (However, Amstrong was stripped of all seven of his Tour de France titles in 2012 by the U.S. Anti-doping Agency.)
• Five years ago: The Boy Scouts of America ended its blanket ban on gay adult leaders while allowing churchsponsored Scout units to maintain the exclusion for religious reasons.