Today in history

1619

The first representative assembly in America convened in Jamestown in the Virginia Colony.

1729

Baltimore, founded. Maryland, was

1864

During the Civil War, Union forces tried to take Petersburg, Virginia, by exploding a gunpowder-laden mine shaft beneath Confederate defense lines; the attack failed.

1918

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

1932

The Summer Olympic Games opened in Los Angeles.

1942

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill creating a women’s auxiliary agency in the Navy known as “Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service” _ WAVES for short.

1945

The Portland class heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis, having just delivered components of the atomic bomb to Tinian in the Mariana Islands, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine; only 317 out of nearly 1,200 men survived.

1956

President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a measure making “In God We Trust” the national motto, replacing “E Pluribus Unum” (Out of many, one).

1965

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a measure creating Medicare, which began operating the following year.

1975

Former Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in suburban Detroit; although presumed dead, his remains have never been found.

1980

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

1996

Actress Claudette Colbert died in Barbados at age 92.