Monday, August 7, 2017

Day 219 - This day in legal and military history

August 7
 

NATIONAL Lighthouse Day
 

NATIONAL Particularly Preposterous Packaging Day
 

NATIONAL Purple Heart Day
 


Today in legal and military [and occasional oddities] history
 

1782 General George Washington authorizes the award of the Badge for Military Merit (the Purple Heart), for soldiers wounded in combat
 

1789 Congress established the US War Department
 

1794 In the summer of 1794, irate farmers in Pennsylvania rose up in the Whiskey Rebellion against the federal tax on liquor and stills
 

1888 Theophilus Van Kannel of Philadelphia receives a patent for the revolving door
 

1922 The Irish Republican Army cuts the cable link between the United States and Europe at Waterville landing station
 

1934 In Washington, the US Court of Appeals rules that the government can neither confiscate nor ban James Joyce’s novel Ulysses
 

1947 The wooden raft Kon-Tiki, which carried Thor Heyerdahl and five companions more than 4,000 miles, crashed into a reef in the Pacific 

1953 SSgt Barbara Barnwell was the first woman Marine awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism, for saving a soldier from drowning
 

1959 The United States launched Explorer 6, which sent back a picture of Earth
 

1964 Congress overwhelmingly passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, allowing the president to use unlimited military force to prevent attacks on US forces and to oppose Communist aggression in Southeast Asia
 

1976 The US Viking 2 spacecraft goes into orbit around Mars
 

1981 The Washington DC Star ceases publication after 128 years
 

1984 Japan defeats the United States to win the Olympic Gold in baseball
 

1987 Lynne Cox becomes the first person to swim from the United States to the Soviet Union, making the 2.7 mile trip through the frigid waters of the Bering Strait
 

1990 Operation Desert Shield begins as US troops deploy to Saudi Arabia to discourage Iraq’s Saddam Hussein from invading that country as he had Kuwait
 

1998 A massive truck bomb explodes outside the US embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and minutes later, another truck bomb detonated outside the US embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
 

2007 Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants breaks Hank Aaron’s record with his 756th home run

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