TODAY IN HISTORY

On Aug. 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law.

In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued the Atlantic Charter, a statement of principles that renounced aggression.

In 1945, President Harry S. Truman announced that Imperial Japan had surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II.

In 1948, the first Summer Olympic Games held since 1936 ended in London ended; they were the first Olympic games held since 1936.

In 1973, U.S. bombing of Cambodia came to a halt.

In 1980, workers went on strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, in a job action that resulted in creation of the Solidarity labor movement.

In 1992, the White House announced that the Pentagon would begin emergency airlifts of food to Somalia to alleviate mass deaths by starvation.

In 1995, Shannon Faulkner officially became the first female cadet in the history of The Citadel, South Carolina’s state military college. (However, Faulkner quit the school less than a week later, citing the stress of her court fight, and her isolation among the male cadets.)

In 1997, an unrepentant Timothy McVeigh was formally sentenced to death for the Oklahoma City bombing.

In 2008, President George W. Bush signed consumersafety legislation that banned lead from children’s toys, imposing the toughest standard in the world.

In 2009, Charles Manson follower Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, 60, convicted of trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, was released from a Texas prison hospital after more than three decades behind bars.

In 2018, a highway bridge collapsed in the Italian city of Genoa during a storm, sending vehicles plunging nearly 150 feet and leaving 43 people dead.