There are 139 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Aug. 14, 1945, President Harry S. Truman announced that Imperial Japan had surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II.
On this date:
In 1848, the Oregon Territory was created.
In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law.
In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued the Atlantic Charter, a statement of principles that renounced aggression.
In 1947, Pakistan became independent of British rule.
In 1948, the Summer Olympics in London ended; they were the first Olympic games held since 1936.
In 1973, U.S. bombing of Cambodia came to a halt.
In 1980, actor-model Dorothy Stratten, 20, was shot to death by her estranged husband and manager, Paul Snider, who then killed himself.
In 1994, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the terrorist known as “Carlos the Jackal,” was captured by French agents in Sudan.
In 1995, Shannon Faulkner officially became the first female cadet in the history of The Citadel, South Carolina’s state military college. (However, Faulkner quit the school less than a week later, citing the stress of her court fight, and her isolation among the male cadets.)
In 1997, an unrepentant Timothy McVeigh was formally sentenced to death for the Oklahoma City bombing. (McVeigh was executed by lethal injection in 2001.)
In 2009, Charles Manson follower Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, 60, convicted of trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, was released from a Texas prison hospital after more than three decades behind bars.
In 2020, India’s coronavirus death toll overtook Britain’s to become the fourth-highest in the world after another single-day record increase in cases.