Today in history

On August 19, 1942, during World War II, about 6,000 Canadian and British soldiers launched a disastrous raid against the Germans at Dieppe, France, suffering more than 50-percent casualties.

In A.D. 14, Caesar Augustus, Rome’s first emperor, died at age 76 after a reign lasting four decades; he was succeeded by his stepson Tiberius.

In 1812, the USS Constitution defeated the British frigate HMS Guerriere off Nova Scotia during the War of 1812, earning the nickname “Old Ironsides.”

In 1814, during the War of 1812, British forces landed at Benedict, Maryland, with the objective of capturing Washington D.C.

In 1918, “Yip! Yip! Yaphank,” a musical revue by Irving Berlin featuring Army recruits from Camp Upton in Yaphank, New York, opened on Broadway.

In 1934, a plebiscite in Germany approved the vesting of sole executive power in Adolf Hitler.

In 1936, the first of a series of show trials orchestrated by Soviet leader Josef Stalin began in Moscow as 16 defendants faced charges of conspiring against the government (all were convicted and executed).

In 1955, torrential rains caused by Hurricane Diane resulted in severe flooding in the northeastern U.S., claiming some 200 lives.

In 1964, The Beatles opened their first full-fledged U.S. tour as they performed at San Francisco’s Cow Palace.

In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford won the Republican presidential nomination at the party’s convention in Kansas City.

In 1980, 301 people aboard a Saudi Arabian L-1011 died as the jetliner made a fiery emergency return to the Riyadh airport.

In 1987, a gun collector ran through Hungerford, England,

60 miles west of London, killing

16 people, including his mother, before turning his gun on himself.

In 1991, Soviet hard-liners stunned the world by announcing that President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had been removed from power. (The coup attempt collapsed two days later.)

Ten years ago: Hurricane Dean, which had already killed eight people on its destructive march across the Caribbean, pummeled Jamaica with gusting winds and torrential rains as a Category 4 storm. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner paid an unannounced and highly symbolic visit to Baghdad — the first by a senior French official since the war started. Elvira Arellano (el-VEE’-ruh ah-ray-AH’-noh), an immigrant without legal status who’d taken refuge in a Chicago church to avoid being separated from her U.S.-born son, was deported to Mexico. (Arellano eventually made her way back to the U.S. and was paroled by immigration authorities in March 2014; her case remains under review.)

“Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers.” — Janis Joplin, American rock singer (1943-1970).