Today in history
Today is Tuesday, Aug. 2, the 214th day of 2022. There are 151 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Aug. 2, 1923, the 29th president of the United States, Warren G. Harding, died in San Francisco; Vice President Calvin Coolidge became president.
On this date:
In 1776, members of the Second Continental Congress began attaching their signatures to the Declaration of Independence.
In 1873, inventor Andrew S. Hallidie (HAH’-lih-day) successfully tested a cable car he had designed for the city of San Francisco.
In 1876, frontiersman “Wild Bill” Hickok was shot and killed while playing poker at a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, by Jack McCall, who was later hanged.
In 1921, a jury in Chicago acquitted several former members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team and two others of conspiring to defraud the public in the notorious “Black Sox” scandal. Opera singer Enrico Caruso, 48, died in Naples, Italy.
In 1922, Alexander Graham Bell, generally regarded as the inventor of the telephone, died in Nova Scotia, Canada, at age 75.
In 1934, German President Paul von Hindenburg died, paving the way for Adolf Hitler’s complete takeover.
In 1939, Albert Einstein signed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging creation of an atomic weapons research program.
In 1945, President Harry S. Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and Britain’s new prime minister, Clement Attlee, concluded the Potsdam conference.
In 1974, former White House counsel John W. Dean III was sentenced to one to four years in prison for obstruction of justice in the Watergate cover-up. (Dean ended up serving four months.)
In 1980, 85 people were killed when a bomb exploded at the train station in Bologna, Italy.
In 1985, 137 people were killed when Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, crashed while attempting to land at DallasFort Worth International Airport.
In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, seizing control of the oil-rich emirate. (The Iraqis were later driven out in Operation Desert Storm.)