TODAY IN HISTORY
In 1718, English pirate Edward Teach — better known as “Blackbeard” — was killed during a battle off what is now North Carolina.
In 1906, the “S-O-S” distress signal was adopted at the International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin.
In 1935, a flying boat, the China Clipper, took off from Alameda, California, carrying more than 100,000 pieces of mail on the first trans-Pacific airmail flight.
In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek met in Cairo to discuss measures for defeating Japan.
In 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was shot to death during a motorcade in Dallas; Texas Gov. John B. Connally, riding in the same car as Kennedy, was seriously wounded. Suspected gunman Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president.
In 1967, the U.N. Security Council approved Resolution 242, which called for Israel to withdraw from territories it had captured the previous June, and implicitly called on adversaries to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
In 1975, Juan Carlos was proclaimed King of Spain.
In 1977, regular passenger service between New York and Europe on the supersonic Concorde began on a trial basis.
In 1990, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, having failed to win re-election to the Conservative Party leadership on the first ballot, announced she would resign.
In 1995, acting swiftly to boost the Balkan peace accord, the U.N. Security Council suspended economic sanctions against Serbia and eased the arms embargo against the states of the former Yugoslavia.
In 2005, Angela Merkel took power as Germany’s first female chancellor.
In 2010, thousands of people stampeded during a festival in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, leaving some 350 dead and hundreds injured in what the prime minister called the country’s biggest tragedy since the 1970s reign of terror by the Khmer Rouge.
In 2014, a 12-year-old Black boy, Tamir Rice, was shot and killed by police outside a Cleveland recreation center after brandishing what turned out to be a pellet gun. (A grand jury declined to indict either the patrolman who fired the fatal shot or a training officer.)
In 2017, Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general whose forces carried out the worst massacre in Europe since World War II, was convicted of genocide and other crimes by the United Nations’ Yugoslav war crimes tribunal and sentenced to life behind bars.
BIRTHDAYS
Animator and movie director Terry Gilliam is 83.
Actor Tom Conti is 82.
Singer Jesse Colin Young is 82.
Astronaut Guion Bluford is 81.
International Tennis Hall of Famer Billie Jean King is 80.
Rock musician-actor Steve Van Zandt (a.k.a. Little Steven) is 73.
Rock musician Tina Weymouth (The Heads; Talking Heads; The Tom Tom Club) is 73.
Retired MLB All-Star Greg Luzinski is 73.
Rock musician Lawrence Gowan is 67.
Actor Richard Kind is 67.
Actor Jamie Lee Curtis is 65.
Alt-country singer Jason Ringenberg (Jason & the Scorchers) is 65.
Actor Mariel Hemingway is 62.
Actor Winsor Harmon is 60.
Actor-turned-producer Brian Robbins is 60.
Actor Stephen Geoffreys is 59.
Rock musician Charlie Colin is 57.
Actor Nicholas Rowe is 57.
Actor Mark Ruffalo is 56.
International Tennis Hall of Famer Boris Becker is 56.
Actor Sidse Babett Knudsen is 55.
Country musician Chris Fryar (Zac Brown Band) is 53.
Actor Josh Cooke is 44.
Actor-singer Tyler Hilton is 40.
Actor Scarlett Johansson is 39.
Actor Jamie Campbell Bower is 35.
Singer Candice Glover (TV: “American Idol”) is 34.
Actor Alden Ehrenreich is 34.
Actor Dacre Montgomery is 29.
Actor Mackenzie Lintz is 27.
