HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY

Today is Saturday, July 30, the 211th day of 2022. There are 154 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlights in History:

1916: German saboteurs blew up a munitions plant on Black Tom, an island near Jersey City, New Jersey, killing about a dozen people.

1918: Poet Joyce Kilmer, a sergeant in the 165th US Infantry Regiment, was killed during the Second Battle of the Marne in World War I. (Kilmer is remembered for his poem Trees .)

1923: New Zealand claims Ross Dependency in Antarctica.

1945: The Portland class heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine; only 317 out of nearly 1200 men survived.

1963: British spy Kim Philby found in Moscow.

1980: Israel’s Knesset passed a law reaffirming all of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state.

2008: Ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was extradited to The Hague to face genocide charges after nearly 13 years on the run. (He was sentenced by a UN court in 2019 to life imprisonment after being convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.)

2010: The Afghan Taliban confirmed the death of longtime leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and appointed his successor, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor.

2013: Wikileaks discloser Bradley [later Chelsea] Manning convicted of 17 espionage charges.

2016: Sixteen people died when a hot air balloon caught fire and exploded after hitting high-tension power lines before crashing into a pasture near Lockhart, Texas.

2018: Official Malaysian investigation into the disappearance of Flight MH370 is unable to determine what happened.

2020: John Lewis was eulogised in Atlanta by three former presidents and others who urged Americans to continue the work of the civil rights icon in fighting injustice during a moment of racial reckoning.

Ten years ago: Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney, on a visit to Israel, outraged Palestinians by telling Jewish donors that their culture was part of the reason Israel was more economically successful than the Palestinians.

Five years ago: Three days after the US Congress approved sanctions against Russia in response to its meddling in the 2016 US election and its military aggression in Ukraine and Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the United States would have to cut the number of embassy and consulate staff in Russia by 755.

One year ago: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis barred school districts from requiring students to wear masks when the new school year began. Broadway theatre operators announced that Covid-19 vaccinations and masks would be required when theatres reopened in the weeks ahead. Japan expanded a coronavirus state of emergency to four more areas in addition to Tokyo following record spikes in infections as the capital hosted the Olympics.