Highlights in history
• In 1483, the Sistine Chapel was consecrated by Pope Sixtus IV.
• In 1769, Napoleon Bonaparte was born on the island of Corsica.
• In 1935, humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow in the Alaska Territory.
• In 1939, the MGM musical “The Wizard of Oz” opened at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood.
• In 1944, during World War II, Allied forces landed in southern France in Operation Dragoon.
• In 1947, India became independent after some 200 years of British rule.
• In 1965, the Beatles played to a crowd of more than 55,000 at New York’s Shea Stadium.
• In 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened in upstate New York.
• In 1971, President Richard Nixon announced a 90-day freeze on wages, prices and rents.
• In 1998, 29 people were killed by a car bomb that tore apart the center of Omagh, Northern Ireland; a splinter group calling itself the Real IRA claimed responsibility.
• In 2004, in Athens, the U.S. men’s basketball team lost 92-73 to Puerto Rico, only the third Olympic defeat ever for the Americans, and the first since adding professional players.
• In 2017, President Donald Trump, who had faced harsh criticism for initially blaming the deadly weekend violence in Charlottesville, Virginia on “many sides,” told reporters that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the confrontation and that groups protesting against the white supremacists were “also very violent.”
• In 2019, retired auto racing driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., his wife and daughter were on a plane that rolled off the end of a runway and caught fire after landing near Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee; there were no serious injuries.
Birthdays
• Civil rights activist Vernon Jordan is 85
• Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is 82
• U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-calif.) is 82
• Author/journalist Linda Ellerbee is 76
• Rock singer/musician Tom Johnston (The Doobie Brothers) is 72
• Britain’s Princess Anne is 70
• Actor Tess Harper is 70
• Philanthropist Melinda
Gates is 56
• Actor Debra Messing is 52
• Actor Anthony Anderson is 50 • Actor Ben Affleck is 48
• Actor Natasha Henstridge is 46 • Latin pop singer Belinda is 31 • Rock singer Joe Jonas (The Jonas Brothers) is 31
Source: Associated Press