Today in history
Today is Saturday, June 4, the 156th day of 2016. There are 210 days left in the year.
On this date in the SCV: In 1989, The Signal reported that a spate of gang activity involving murder, beatings, drug dealings and assaults had raised fears and concerns about the extent of gang activity in the SCV. Sheriff’s officials had in the past tried to downplay the gangs’ presence, some school officials tried to cover it up and teenagers sometimes overstated it. But it was evident that gangs – both those based in the SCV and other Los Angelesarea gangs that operated here –posed a significant threat in the SCV.
Today’s Highlight in History: On June 4, 1986, Jonathan Jay Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, pleaded guilty in Washington to conspiring to deliver information related to the national defense to Israel. (Pollard, sentenced to life in prison, was released on parole on Nov. 20, 2015.)
Ten years ago: Peru’s former president, Alan Garcia, won the country’s presidential runoff election. A Palestinian standoff intensified after Hamas rejected an ultimatum from President Mahmoud Abbas to endorse a plan implicitly recognizing Israel. Five years ago: China’s Li Na captured her first Grand Slam singles title, becoming the first tennis player from China, man or woman, to achieve such a feat; Na beat Francesca Schiavone 6-4, 7-6 (0) in the French Open final. Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, 80, died in Charlottesville, Virginia.
One year ago: The Department of Homeland Security announced that hackers had broken into the U.S. government personnel office and stolen identifying information of at least 4 million federal workers. (The breach was later said to have totaled 21.5 million current and former federal employees and job applicants; Chinese hackers were suspected of being behind the cyberattack.) Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry opened his second bid for the Republican presidential nomination. A huge explosion at a gas station in Ghana’s capital of Accra left at least 160 people dead. On this date: In 1783, the Montgolfier brothers first publicly demonstrated their hot-air balloon, which did not carry any passengers, over Annonay, France. In 1784, opera singer Elisabeth Thible became the first woman to make a non-tethered flight aboard a Montgolfier hot-air balloon, over Lyon, France. In 1892, the Sierra Club was incorporated in San Francisco. In 1919, Congress approved the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing citizens the right to vote regardless of their gender, and sent it to the states for ratification. In 1939, the German ocean liner MS St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees from Germany, was turned away from the Florida coast by U.S. officials. In 1940, during World War II, the Allied military evacuation of some 338,000 troops from Dunkirk, France, ended. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”