TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1557

Anne of Cleves, who was briefly the fourth wife of England’s King Henry VIII, died in London at age 41. In 1790, a site along the Potomac River was designated the permanent seat of the United States government; the area became Washington, D.C.

1862

Flag Officer David G. Farragut became the first rear admiral in the United States Navy.

1964

As he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in San Francisco, Barry M. Goldwater declared that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” and that “moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

1969

Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy on the first manned mission to the surface of the moon.

1973

During the Senate Watergate hearings, former White House aide Alexander P. Butterfield publicly revealed the existence of President Richard Nixon’s secret taping system.

1980

Former California Gov. Ronald Reagan won the Republican presidential nomination at the party’s convention in Detroit.

1994

The first of 21 pieces of comet Shoemaker-levy 9 smashed into Jupiter, to the joy of astronomers awaiting the celestial fireworks. In 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren Bessette (BIH-SEHT’), died when their single-engine plane, piloted by Kennedy, plunged into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

2002

The Irish Republican Army issued an unprecedented apology for the deaths of “noncombatants” over 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland.

2004

Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in prison and five months of home confinement by a federal judge in New York for lying about a stock sale.

2008

Florida resident Casey Anthony, whose 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, had been missing a month, was arrested on charges of child neglect, making false official statements and obstructing a criminal investigation. (Casey Anthony was later acquitted at trial of murdering Caylee, whose skeletal remains were found in December 2008; she was convicted of lying to police.)