Ten years ago: Rupert Murdoch’s media empire unexpectedly jettisoned News of the World, Britain’s best-selling Sunday newspaper, after a public backlash over claims it had used phone hacking and other illegal tactics to expose the rich and famous, royals and ordinary citizens. A Texas Rangers fan, 39-year-old Shannon Stone, died from a fatal fall when reaching out to grab a baseball tossed his way by outfielder Josh Hamilton during a Rangers game. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” the final movie based on the wizard fantasy books, debuted in London on its way to becoming the year’s top-grossing movie.
Five years ago: Micah Johnson, a Black Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, opened fire on Dallas police, killing five officers in an act of vengeance for the fatal police shootings of Black men; the attack ended with Johnson being killed by a bomb delivered by a police robot. President Barack Obama embarked on a five-day, two-country mission to buck up a beleaguered Europe and brush back an aggressive Moscow; after arriving in Warsaw, Poland, Obama denounced the fatal attack in Dallas as “despicable” and declared there was no justification for the violence.
One year ago: Texas surpassed 10,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day for the first time, as a resurgence of the outbreak raged across the U.S. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro said he had tested positive for the coronavirus after months of downplaying its severity; he said he was already taking hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug unproven to treat COVID-19.
