TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

July 30, 1956

President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a measure making “In God We Trust” the national motto, replacing “E Pluribus Unum”.

ALSO ON THIS DATE

1619

The first representative assembly in America convened in Jamestown in the Virginia Colony.

1729

Baltimore, Md. was founded.

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” _ WAVES for short.

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.