Also on this date
In 1875, Capt. Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel, getting from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in 22 hours.
In 1944, during World War II, Paris was liberated by Allied forces after four years of Nazi occupation.
In 1981, the U.S. spacecraft Voyager 2 came within 63,000 miles of Saturn’s cloud cover, sending back pictures of and data about the ringed planet.
In 2001, R&B singer Aaliyah was killed with eight others in a plane crash in the Bahamas; she was 22.
In 2009, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the liberal lion of the U.S. Senate, died at age 77 in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, after being diagnosed with a brain tumor.
In 2014, a funeral was held in St. Louis for Michael Brown, the Black 18-year-old who was shot to death by a police officer in suburban Ferguson.
In 2018, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who had spent years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam before a 35-year political career that took him to the Republican presidential nomination, died at 81 after battling brain cancer for more than a year.
Ten years ago: Neil Armstrong, 82, who commanded the historic Apollo 11 lunar landing and in July 1969 was the first person to set foot on the moon, died in Cincinnati.
Five years ago: Hurricane Harvey, the fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in more than a decade, made landfall near Corpus Christi, Texas, with 130 mph sustained winds; the storm would deliver five days of rain totaling close to 52 inches, the heaviest tropical downpour that had ever been recorded in the continental U.S. (The hurricane left at least 68 people dead and caused an estimated $125 billion in damage in Texas.)
One year ago: A man who was angered by state-ordered coronavirus restrictions was sentenced to just over six years in prison for planning to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer; Ty Garbin was among six men charged in federal court, but was the first to plead guilty.