Thursday, August 4

This Day In History

• 1735   A jury acquitted John Peter Zenger of the New York Weekly Journal of seditious libel.
  
• 1753   George Washington became a Master Mason on this day.
  
• 1790   The Coast Guard had its beginnings as the Revenue Cutter Service.
  
• 1792   English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in Field Place, England.
  
• 1821   "The Saturday Evening Post" was published as a weekly for the first time.
  
• 1830   Plans for the city of Chicago were laid out.
  
• 1892   Andrew and Abby Borden were axed to death in their home in Fall River, Mass. Lizzie Borden, Andrew Borden's daughter from a previous marriage, was accused of the killings, though she was later acquited.
  
• 1916   The United States purchased the Danish Virgin Islands for $25 million.
  
• 1944   Nazi police raided the secret annex of a building in Amsterdam and arrested eight people, including 15-year-old Anne Frank, whose diary became a famous account of the Holocaust.
  
• 1964   The bodies of three missing civil rights workers were found buried in an earthen dam in Mississippi.
  
• 1977   President Jimmy Carter signed a measure establishing the Department of Energy.
  
• 1987   The Federal Communications Commission voted to rescind the Fairness Doctrine, which required radio and television stations to present balanced coverage of controversial issues.
  
• 1994   Serb-dominated Yugoslavia withdrew its support for Bosnian Serbs, sealing the 300-mile border between Yugoslavia and Serb-held Bosnia.
  
• 2002   A Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a bus in northern Israel during rush hour, killing himself and nine passengers.
  

Happy Birthday To

• 1900   Ernie Pyle (journalist: Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter [1944]: reports of 1940 London bombings and war reports from Africa, Italy and France; managing editor: Washington Daily News; killed by sniper’s bullet on Ie Shima, small island off Okinawa, April 18, 1945)
  
• 1540   Joseph Scaliger (scientific chronologist: the Julian calendar; died in 1609)
  
• 1792   Percy Bysshe Shelley (lyric poet)
  
• 1884   Isoroku Yamamoto (Japanese Admiral during WWII: planned attack on Pearl Harbor; killed when U.S. 13th Air Force shot down his plane Apr 18, 1943)
  
• 1901   (Daniel) Louis Armstrong (Satchmo: jazz musician: trumpet)
  
• 1912   Raoul Wallenberg (architect; humanitarian: rescued at least 100,000 Jews from certain death in World War II; honored posthumously by the U.S. government: U.S. House of Representatives voted to award Mr. Wallenberg with honorary American citizenship [1981]: only the second person to receive such recognition [Winston Churchill was the first]; died in a Russian prison July 17, 1947)
  
• 1920   Helen Thomas (journalist: UPI White House correspondent [from Kennedy to Clinton: 1961-2000]; author: Front Row at the White House)