Today in history

On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, seizing control of the oil-rich emirate. (The Iraqis were later driven out in Operation Desert Storm.)

In 1610, during his fourth voyage to the Western Hemisphere, English explorer Henry Hudson sailed into what is now known as Hudson Bay.

In 1776, members of the Second Continental Congress began attaching their signatures to the Declaration of Independence.

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. President Roosevelt signed the Hatch Act, which prohibited civil service employees from taking an active part in political campaigns.

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 2000, Republicans awarded Texas Gov. George W. Bush their 2000 presidential nomination at the party’s convention in Philadelphia and ratified Dick Cheney as his running mate.

Ten years ago: A mystery from the 1991 Gulf War was finally solved as the Pentagon announced that the remains of missing Navy pilot Michael “Scott” Speicher had been found.

Five years ago: Dr. Kent Brantly, the first Ebola victim to be brought to the United States from Africa, was safely escorted into a specialized isolation unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, where he recovered from the disease. Author Billie Letts, 76, died in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

One year ago: Pope Francis changed Catholic Church teaching on capital punishment, decreeing that the death penalty is “inadmissible” under all circumstances. Apple became the world’s first publicly-traded company to be valued at $1 trillion. The Trump administration proposed weakening Obama-era mileage standards designed to make cars more fuel efficient and less polluting.