TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Sunday, July 28, the 209th day of 2019. There are 156 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On July 28, 1976, an earthquake devastated northern China, killing at least 242,000 people, according to an official estimate. On this date: In 1609, the English ship Sea Venture, commanded by Adm. Sir George Somers, ran ashore on Bermuda, where the passengers and crew founded a colony.
In 1794, Maximilien Robespierre, a leading figure of the French Revolution, was sent to the guillotine.
In 1914, World War I began as Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.
In 1915, more than 300 American sailors and Marines arrived in Haiti to restore order following the killing of Haitian President Vibrun Guillaume Sam by rebels, beginning a 19-year U.S. occupation.
In 1932, federal troops forcibly dispersed the socalled “Bonus Army” of World War I veterans who had gathered in Washington to demand payments they weren’t scheduled to receive until 1945.
In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the end of coffee rationing, which had limited people to one pound of coffee every five weeks since it began in Nov. 1942.
In 1945, the U.S. Senate ratified the United Nations Charter by a vote of 89-2. A U.S. Army bomber crashed into the 79th floor of New York’s Empire State Building, killing 14 people.
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he was increasing the number of American troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000 “almost immediately.”
In 1984, the Los Angeles Summer Olympics opened.
In 1989, Israeli commandos abducted a proIranian Shiite (SHEE’eyet) Muslim cleric, Sheik Abdul-Karim Obeid (AHB’-dool kah-REEM’ oh-BAYD’), from his home in south Lebanon. (He was released in January 2004 as part of a prisoner swap.)
In 2006, Actor-director Mel Gibson went into an anti-Semitic tirade as he was being arrested on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, California, on suspicion of driving while drunk; Gibson later apologized and was sentenced to probation and alcohol treatment.