Today is Wednesday, Aug. 28, the 240th day of 2019. There are 125 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On August 28, 1955, Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago, was abducted from his uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi, by two white men after he had supposedly whistled at a white woman; he was found brutally slain three days later.
On this date:
In 1916, Italy declared war on Germany during World War I.
In 1944, during World War II, German forces in Toulon and Marseille (mahr-SAY’), France, surrendered to Allied troops.
In 1963, more than 200,000 people listened as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
In 1968, police and anti-war demonstrators clashed in the streets of Chicago as the Democratic National Convention nominated Hubert H. Humphrey for president.
In 1987, a fire damaged the Arcadia, Fla., home of Ricky, Robert and Randy Ray, three hemophiliac brothers infected with AIDS whose court-ordered school attendance had sparked a local uproar. Academy Award-winning movie director John Huston died in Middletown, R.I., at age 81.
In 1990, an F5 tornado struck the Chicago area, killing 29 people.
In 1996, Democrats nominated President Bill Clinton for a second term at their national convention in Chicago. The troubled 15-year marriage of Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana officially ended with the issuing of a divorce decree.
In 2005, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (NAY’-gin) ordered everyone in the city to evacuate after Hurricane Katrina grew to a monster storm.
In 2008, surrounded by an enormous, adoring crowd at Invesco Field in Denver, Barack Obama accepted the Democratic presidential nomination, promising what he called a clean break from the “broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush.”
In 2012, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney swept to the Republican presidential nomination at a storm-delayed national convention in Tampa, Florida.
In 2013, a military jury sentenced Maj. Nidal Hasan to death for the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood that claimed 13 lives. On the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial, President Barack Obama stood on the same steps as he challenged new generations to seize the cause of racial equality.
In 2017, floodwaters reached the rooflines of single-story homes as Hurricane Harvey poured rain on the Houston area for a fourth consecutive day; thousands of people had been rescued from the flooding.
Ten years ago: The Los Angeles County coroner’s office announced that Michael Jackson’s death was a homicide caused primarily by the powerful anesthetic propofol (PROH’-puh-fahl) and another sedative, lorazepam (lor-AZ’-uh-pam). Celebrity disc jockey Adam Goldstein, known as DJ AM, was found dead in his New York apartment; he was 36.
Five years ago: Comedian Joan Rivers was rushed to New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital after she suffered cardiac arrest at a doctor’s office where she’d gone for a routine outpatient procedure (Rivers died a week later at age 81). Acknowledging he “didn’t get it right” with a two-game suspension for Ravens running back Ray Rice, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (guh-DEHL’) announced tougher penalties for players accused of domestic violence, including six weeks for a first offense and at least a year for a second. Glenn Cornick, 67, the original bass player in the rock band Jethro Tull, died in Hilo, Hawaii.
One year ago: A white former police officer, Roy Oliver, was convicted of murder for fatally shooting an unarmed black 15-year-old boy, Jordan Edwards, while firing into a car packed with teenagers in suburban Dallas; Oliver was sentenced the following day to 15 years in prison. Puerto Rico’s governor raised the official death toll from Hurricane Maria in the U.S. territory from 64 to 2,975, after an independent study found that the number of people who died in the aftermath of the 2017 storm had been severely undercounted. Mourners filed into an African American history museum in Detroit for a public viewing for the late Aretha Franklin, part of a week of commemorations for the soul legend.
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