Today in history
Today is Sunday, July 12, the 194th day of 2020. There are 172 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History
On July 12, 1967, rioting erupted in Newark, New Jersey, over the police beating of a Black taxi driver; 26 people were killed in the five days of violence that followed.
On this date
In 1543, England’s King Henry VIII married his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr.
In 1862, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill authorizing the Army Medal of Honor.
In 1909, the House of Representatives joined the Senate in passing the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, allowing for a federal income tax, and submitted it to the states. (It was declared ratified in February 1913.)
In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was flown by helicopter from the White House to a secret mountaintop location as part of a drill involving a mock nuclear attack on Washington.
In 1962, The Rolling Stones played their first-ever gig at The Marquee in London.
In 1974, President Richard
Nixon signed a measure creating the Congressional Budget Office. Former White House aide John Ehrlichman and three others were convicted of conspiring to violate the civil rights of Daniel Ellsberg’s former psychiatrist.
In 1984, Democratic presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale announced his choice of U.S. Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York to be his running-mate; Ferraro was the first woman to run for vice president on a majorparty ticket.
In 1991, a Japanese professor (Hitoshi Igarashi) who had translated Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” was found stabbed to death, nine days after the novel’s Italian translator was attacked in Milan.
In 1994, President Bill Clinton, visiting Germany, went to the eastern sector of Berlin, the first U.S. president to do so since Harry Truman.
In 2003, the USS Ronald Reagan, the first carrier named for a living president, was commissioned in Norfolk, Va.
In 2001, Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant tortured in a New York City police station, agreed to an $8.7 million settlement with the city and its police union.