Today in history
Today is Sunday, July 29, the 210th day of 2018. There are 155 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On July 29, 1921, Adolf Hitler became the leader (“fuehrer”) of the National Socialist German Workers Party.
On this date:
In 1030, the patron saint of Norway, King Olaf II, was killed in battle.
In 1890, artist Vincent van Gogh, 37, died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound in Auvers-surOise, France.
In 1914, transcontinental telephone service in the U. S. became operational with the first test conversation between New York and San Francisco. Massachusetts’ Cape Cod Canal, offering a shortcut across the base of the peninsula, was officially opened to shipping traffic.
In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA.
In 1967, an accidental rocket launch on the deck of the supercarrier USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin resulted in a fire and explosions that killed 134 servicemen. (Among the survivors was future Arizona senator John McCain, a U.S. Navy lieutenant commander who narrowly escaped with his life.)
In 1974, singer Cass Elliot died in a London hotel room at age 32.
In 1975, President Gerald R. Ford became the first U. S. president to visit the site of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland.
In 1980, a state funeral was held in Cairo, Egypt, for the deposed Shah of Iran, who had died two days earlier at age 60.
In 1981, Britain’s Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in a glittering ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. (The couple divorced in 1996.)
In 1994, abortion opponent Paul Hill shot and killed Dr. John Bayard Britton and Britton’s bodyguard, James H. Barrett, outside the Ladies Center clinic in Pensacola, Florida. (Hill was executed in Sept. 2003.)
In 2004, Sen. John Kerry accepted the Democratic presidential nomination at the party’s convention in Boston with a military salute and the declaration: “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty.”
In 2006, the U. S. command announced it was sending 3,700 troops to Baghdad to try to quell sectarian violence sweeping the Iraqi capital.
Ten years ago: Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens was indicted on seven felony counts of concealing more than a quarter of a million dollars in house renovations and gifts from a powerful oil contractor. (A jury later found the longtime Republican lawmaker guilty of lying on financial disclosure forms, but a judge subsequently dismissed the case, saying prosecutors had withheld evidence.) Disgraced exNBA official Tim Donaghy admitted that he’d brought shame on his profession as a federal judge sentenced him to 15 months behind bars for a gambling scandal. Army scientist Bruce E. Ivins, 62, named as a top suspect in anthrax mailing attacks in 2001, died at a hospital in Frederick, Md., after deliberately overdosing on Tylenol.
Five years ago: The U.S. launched a fresh bid to pull Israel and the Palestinians into substantial negotiations with a dinner meeting in Washington hosted by Secretary of State John Kerry. The FBI said authorities had rescued 105 young people and arrested 150 alleged pimps and others in a three-day sweep in 76 cities.