Today in history
Today is Wednesday, September 30, the 273rd day of 2015.
There are 92 days left in the year. On this date in the SCV: In 1988, classic volumes by such authors as Charles Dickens and Ernest Hemingway, which burned in the Los Angeles Central Library fire, were to be restored in the Santa Clarita Valley by Document Reprocessors. Document Reprocessors, a San Franciscobased firm, was working out of a Saugus warehouse once used by Thatcher Glass. After the April 29 and Sept. 3, 1986, arson fires, library officials had put the damaged books into frozen storage in two ice houses in Los Angeles in an attempt to stop the mildew and mold damage until a temporary library could be found. The processing took from three to 12 days, depending on the amount of damage a book sustained.
Today’s Highlight in History: On September 30, 1955, actor James Dean, 24, was killed in a two-car collision near Cholame, California.
Ten years ago: Out of jail after 85 days, New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified before a grand jury investigating the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity. Six Mexicans were killed in a string of robberies targeting Hispanic immigrants at trailer parks in and around Tifton, Georgia. ( Stacey Bernard Sims and Jamie Underwood received long prison sentences for the killings.) Five years ago: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Guatemalan leaders to apologize for 1940s U.S.-led experiments that infected occupants of a Guatemala mental hospital with syphilis, apparently to test the effectiveness of penicillin against some sexually transmitted diseases. The government of Ecuador declared a state of siege after rebellious police angered by a law that cut their benefits plunged the small South American nation into chaos.
One year ago: Under withering criticism from Congress, Secret Service Director Julia Pierson admitted failures in her agency’s critical mission of protecting the president but repeatedly sidestepped key questions about how a knife-carrying intruder penetrated ring after ring of security before finally being tackled deep inside the White House. U.S. and Afghan officials signed a long-delayed security pact to keep nearly 10,000 American forces in Afghanistan beyond the planned final withdrawal of U.S. and international combat forces at the end of the year. The first case of Ebola diagnosed in the U.S. was confirmed in a patient who had recently traveled from Liberia to Dallas. President Barack Obama showered praise on India’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, in an Oval Office meeting. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the nation’s first statewide ban on single-use plastic bags at grocery and convenience stores.