TODAY IN HISTORY

On Aug. 9, 1854, Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” was first published.

In 1945, three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, a U.S. B-29 Superfortress codenamed

Bockscar dropped a nuclear device (“Fat Man”) over Nagasaki, killing an estimated 74,000 people.

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

In 1995, Jerry Garcia, lead singer of the Grateful

Dead, died in Forest Knolls, California, of a heart attack at age 53.

In 2014, Michael Brown Jr., a Black 18-year-old, 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.