This Day in History — August 7
Today is the 220th day of 2020. There are 146 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2017: Medical examiners said the remains of a man who’d been killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11 has been identified, nearly 16 years after the attacks.
OTHER EVENTS
1647: Oliver Cromwell’s parliamentary army marches into London after proposals to Crown are rejected.
1782: General George Washington creates the Order of the Purple Heart, a decoration to recognise merit in enlisted men and non-commissioned officers in the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War.
1789: The US Department of War is established by Congress.
1794: The Whiskey Rebellion, a fight over taxes imposed on whiskey-making in the United States, takes place in Pennsylvania.
1804: US fleet bombards Mediterranean port of Tripoli, a pirate lair.
1819: Simon Bolivar and Francisco de Paula Santander lead Colombian troops to victory against Spain in the Battle of Boyaca, effectively ending Spanish control of Nueva Granada.
1858: First game of Australian Rules football reportedly played in Melbourne, with 40 players on each team and a pitch 800 metres long.
1941: Soviet planes carry out their first bombing raids against Berlin, Germany, in World War II.
1945: Soviet Union declares war on Japan seven days before Japanese surrender in World War II.
1959: The United States launches the Explorer 6 satellite, which sent back images of Earth.
1960: Ivory Coast becomes independent of France.
1964: The Warren Commission concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of US President John F Kennedy.
1974: French stuntman Philippe Petit walks a tightrope strung between the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center.
1991: Croatian Government accepts a federal peace plan in Yugoslavia and says it will not be first to break a ceasefire in the republic.
2000: US vice-president and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore selects Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman as his running mate; Lieberman becomes the first Jew on a major party’s presidential ticket.
2002: Alvaro Uribe is sworn in as president of Colombia. During the inauguration, nearby mortar attacks, suspected to have been launched by leftist rebels, kill 19 people and wound 60.
2006: Alvaro Uribe is inaugurated as president of Colombia for a second term, promising to seek an elusive peace with leftist rebels while maintaining hard-line security policies.
2007: San Francisco’s Barry Bonds hits home run No 756 to break Hank Aaron’s storied record with one out in the fifth innings of a game against the Washington Nationals, who won 8-6.
2008: A US military jury sentences Osama bin Laden’s driver to 5 1/2 years for aiding terrorism, making him eligible for release in five months. US President George W Bush, speaking in Bangkok, Thailand, praises the spread of freedom in Asia while sharply criticising oppression and human rights abuses in China, Myanmar and North Korea; the president then travels to Beijing to attend the opening of the Olympic Games.
2011: New unrest erupts on north London’s streets, a day after rioting and looting in a deprived area amid community anger over a fatal police shooting.
2014: Russia retaliates for sanctions over the crisis in Ukraine by banning most food imports from the West.
2017: Chicago files a lawsuit challenging the US Donald Trump Administration’s policy of withholding public safety grants from sanctuary cities, which chose to limit cooperation with government enforcement of immigration laws. (A federal appeals court later rules that the federal government cannot set new conditions to awarding those grants.)
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Stanley J Weyman, English author (1855-1928); Emil Nolde, German painter (1867-1956); Mata Hari, Dutch spy (1876-1917); Louis Leakey, British anthropologist (1903-1972); Ralph Bunche, US diplomat and civil rights activist (1904-1971); Nicholas Ray, US film director (1911-1979); Garrison Keillor, US humorist (1942- ); Charlize Theron, South African actress/model (1975- )
— AP