Today is Tuesday, Aug. 11, the 224th day of 2020. There are 142 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On August 11, 1997, President Bill Clinton made the first use of the historic line-item veto, rejecting three items in spending and tax bills. (However, the U.S. Supreme Court later struck down the veto as unconstitutional.)
On this date:
In 1934, the first federal prisoners arrived at Alcatraz Island (a former military prison) in San Francisco Bay.
In 1949, President Harry S. Truman nominated General Omar N. Bradley to become the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In 1952, Hussein bin Talal was proclaimed King of Jordan, beginning a reign lasting nearly 47 years.
In 1960, the African country of Chad became independent of France.
In 1964, the Beatles movie “A Hard Day’s Night” had its U.S. premiere in New York.
In 1965, rioting and looting that claimed 34 lives broke out in the predominantly Black Watts section of Los Angeles.
In 1991, Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon released two Western captives: Edward Tracy, an American held nearly five years, and Jerome Leyraud, a Frenchman who’d been abducted by a rival group three days earlier.
In 1992, the Mall of America, the nation’s largest shopping-entertainment center, opened in Bloomington, Minnesota.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton named Army Gen. John Shalikashvili (shah-lee-kash-VEE’-lee) to be the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, succeeding the retiring Gen. Colin Powell.
In 2012, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney announced his choice of Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to be his running mate. Usain Bolt capped his perfect London Olympics by leading Jamaica to victory in a world-record 36.84 seconds in the 4×100 meters.
In 2017, a federal judge ordered Charlottesville, Virginia, to allow a weekend rally of white nationalists and other extremists to take place at its originally planned location downtown. (Violence erupted at the rally, and a woman was killed when a man plowed his car into a group of counterprotesters.)
In 2014, Academy Award-winning actor and comedian Robin Williams, 63, died in Tiburon, California, a suicide.
