TODAY IN HISTORY

On July 27, 1940, Billboard magazine published its first “music popularity chart” listing bestselling retail records.

In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the

Kerner Commission to assess the causes of urban rioting, the same day Black militant H. Rap Brown told a press conference in Washington that violence was “as American as cherry pie.”

6-year-old Adam Walsh was abducted from a department store in Hollywood, Florida, and was later murdered. (His father, John Walsh,

In 1981,

became a well-known crime victims’ advocate.)

In 1996, terror struck the Atlanta Olympics as a pipe bomb exploded at Centennial Olympic Park.

In 2015, the Boy Scouts of America ended its blanket ban on gay adult leaders while allowing church-sponsored Scout units to maintain exclusion for religious reasons.