Today is Tuesday, July 30, the 211th day of 2019.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On July 30, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a measure making “In God We Trust” the national motto, replacing “E Pluribus Unum” (Out of many, one).
On this date:
In 1619, the first representative assembly in America convened in Jamestown in the Virginia Colony.
In 1729, Baltimore, Md. was founded.
In 1792, the French national anthem “La Marseillaise” (lah mar-seh-YEHZ’), by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, was first sung in Paris by troops arriving from Marseille.
In 1916, German saboteurs blew up a munitions plant on Black Tom, an island near Jersey City, New Jersey, killing about a dozen people.
In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill creating a women’s auxiliary agency in the Navy known as “Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service” _ WAVES for short.
In 1945, the Portland class heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis, having just delivered components of the atomic bomb to Tinian in the Mariana Islands, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine; only 317 out of nearly 1,200 men survived.
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a measure creating Medicare, which began operating the following year.
In 1975, former Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in suburban Detroit; although presumed dead, his remains have never been found.
In 1980, Israel’s Knesset passed a law reaffirming all of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state.
In 2001, Robert Mueller (MUHL’-ur), President George W. Bush’s choice to head the FBI, promised the Senate Judiciary Committee that if confirmed, he would move forcefully to fix problems at the agency. (Mueller became FBI director on Sept. 4, 2001, a week before the 9/11 attacks.)
In 2002, WNBA player Lisa Leslie of the Los Angeles Sparks became the first woman to dunk in a professional game, jamming on a breakaway in the first half of the Sparks’ 82-73 loss to the Miami Sol.
In 2003, President George W. Bush took personal responsibility for the first time for using discredited intelligence in his State of the Union address, but predicted he would be vindicated for going to war against Iraq.
Ten years ago: Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police officer who’d arrested him for disorderly conduct at his home, had beers with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden at the White House to discuss the dispute that unleashed a furor over racial profiling in America.
Five years ago: The House overwhelmingly approved, 420-5, a landmark bill to refurbish the Veterans Affairs Department and improve veterans’ health care. Three Israeli artillery shells slammed into a United Nations school in Gaza crowded with some 3,300 people; the shells, which Israel said came in response to mortar fire nearby, killed 17 people.
One year ago: Zimbabwe voted for the first time without Robert Mugabe on the ballot; there were long lines at some polling stations. President Donald Trump said he’d be willing to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani “anytime” with “no preconditions.” More than 27,000 people remained evacuated because of a Northern California wildfire that ranked as the ninth most destructive blaze in the state’s history; the fire in the area of Redding had destroyed more than 800 homes and left two firefighters and four civilians dead. Ron Dellums, an anti-war activist who championed social justice as Northern California’s first black congressman, died of cancer at his home in Washington at the age of 82.
Copyright © 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.
