Today in history

On August 9, 1945, three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, a U.S. B-29 Superfortress code-named Bockscar dropped a nuclear device (“Fat Man”) over Nagasaki, killing an estimated 74,000 people.

In 1854, Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden,” which described Thoreau’s experiences while living near Walden Pond in Massachusetts, was first published.

In 1910, the U.S. Patent Office granted Alva J. Fisher of the Hurley Machine Co. a patent for an electrically powered washing machine.

In 1936, Jesse Owens won his fourth gold medal at the Berlin Olympics as the United States took first place in the 400-meter relay.

In 1944, 258 African-American sailors based at Port Chicago, California, refused to load a munitions ship following a cargo vessel explosion that killed 320 men, many of them black. (Fifty of the sailors were convicted of mutiny, fined and imprisoned.)

In 1969, actress Sharon Tate and four other people were found brutally slain at Tate’s Los Angeles home; cult leader Charles Manson and a group of his followers were later convicted of the crime.

In 1974, Vice President Gerald R. Ford became the nation’s 38th chief executive as President Richard Nixon’s resignation took effect.

In 1982, a federal judge in Washington ordered John W. Hinckley Jr., who’d been acquitted of shooting President Ronald Reagan and three others by reason of insanity, committed to a mental hospital.

In 1985, a federal judge in Norfolk, Virginia, found retired Navy officer Arthur J. Walker guilty of seven counts of spying for the Soviet Union. (Walker, who was sentenced to life, died in prison in 2014 at the age of 79.)

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan nominated Lauro Cavazos to be secretary of education; Cavazos became the first Hispanic to serve in the Cabinet.

In 1995, Jerry Garcia, lead singer of the Grateful Dead, died in Forest Knolls, California, of a heart attack at age 53.

In 2004, Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, addressing a court for the first time, asked victims of the blast for forgiveness as a judge sentenced him to 161 consecutive life sentences.

Ten years ago: Iraqi authorities arrested British contractor Danny Fitzsimons in the shooting deaths of two co-workers in Baghdad’s protected Green Zone. (Fitzsimons was convicted by an Iraqi court in 2011 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.)

Five years ago: Michael Brown Jr., an unarmed 18-year-old black man, was shot to death by a police officer following an altercation in Ferguson, Missouri; Brown’s death led to sometimes-violent protests in Ferguson and other U.S. cities, spawning a national “Black Lives Matter” movement.

One year ago: Vice President Mike Pence announced plans for a new, separate U.S. Space Force as a sixth military service by 2020. The parents of first lady Melania Trump were sworn in as U.S. citizens; they had been living in the country as permanent residents. Player demonstrations again took place at several early NFL preseason games, with two Philadelphia Eagles players raising their fists during the national anthem. Evacuation orders expanded to 20,000 as a wildfire that had been intentionally set moved perilously close to homes in Southern California.