Today in history

On July 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution took effect, guaranteeing due process of law. In 1896 the city of Miami was incorporated.

In 1914 World War I began when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.

In 1932 federal troops dispersed the “Bonus Army” of poor, unemployed World War I veterans who had gathered in Washington since May to seek additional benefits.

In 1943 President Franklin Roosevelt announced the end of coffee rationing.

In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson announced he was increasing the number of U.S. troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.

In 1976 more than 240,000 people died when an earthquake struck northern China’s Tangshan province. In 1980 Fernando Belaunde Terry returned to the presidency of Peru, ending 12 years of military rule.

In 1984 the Summer Olympics opened in Los Angeles, minus a Soviet-led bloc of 15 nations, plus Iran, Libya, Albania and Bolivia. In 1988 Congress approved $6 billion in aid for droughtstricken farmers.

In 2000 Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was sworn in for an unprecedented third term, infuriating demonstrators who set government buildings ablaze.

In 2004 Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who with James Watson discovered the structure of DNA, died in San Diego; he was 88.

In 2005 the Irish Republican Army renounced the use of violence against British rule in Northern Ireland and said it would disarm.

In 2013 a bus crashed through a guardrail and plunged nearly 100 feet near Baiano, Italy, killing 38 people. Also in 2013, Eileen Brennan, actress best known for her role in the 1980 film “Private Benjamin, died in Burbank, Calif.; she was 80.

In 2014 Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, the last surviving member of the Enola Gay crew that dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, died in Stone Mountain, Ga.; he was 93.

In 2015 Walter Palmer, a 55-year-old Minnesota dentist, was identified by officials as the American facing poaching charges for the crossbow killing of Cecil, a well-known protected lion, in Zimbabwe, setting off a torrent of online condemnation.