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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