Today in history

In 1848 the New York Herald reported the discovery of gold in California.

In 1929 the comedy program “Amos ’n’ Andy,” starring Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, made its coast-to-coast radio debut on NBC.

In 1934 a plebiscite in Germany approved the vesting of sole executive power in Adolf Hitler.

In 1942 about 6,000 Canadian and British soldiers launched a disastrous raid against the Germans at Dieppe, France, suffering about 50 percent casualties. In 1955 severe flooding in the Northeast caused by the remnants of Hurricane Diane claimed some 200 lives.

In 1960 a tribunal in Moscow convicted American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers of espionage.

In 1964 the Beatles opened their first full-fledged U.S. tour as they performed at San Francisco’s Cow Palace.

In 1976 President Gerald Ford won the Republican presidential nomination at the party’s convention in Kansas City.

In 1977 comedian Groucho Marx died in Los Angeles; he was 86.

In 1980 301 people aboard a Saudi Arabian L-1011 died as the jetliner made a fiery emergency landing at the Riyadh airport.

In 1990 Iraqi President Saddam Hussein offered to free all foreigners detained in Iraq and Kuwait provided the United States promise to withdraw its forces from Saudi Arabia and guarantee that an international economic embargo would be lifted.

In 1991 Soviet hard-liners announced to a shocked world that President Mikhail Gorbachev had been removed from power. (The coup collapsed two days later.) Also in 1991 rioting erupted in the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of Crown Heights after an African-American 7-year-old, Gavin Cato, was struck and killed by a Jewish driver from the ultra-Orthodox Lubavitch community; three hours later, an African-American mob fatally stabbed Yankel Rosenbaum, a rabinnical student.

In 1994 President Bill Clinton abruptly halted the nation’s 3-decade-long opendoor policy for Cuban refugees.