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Today's highlight in history:
On July 30, 1945, during World War II, the battle cruiser USS Indianapolis, which had just delivered components for the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine; only 316 out of some 1,200 men survived the sinking and shark-infested waters.
On this date:
In 1619, the first representative assembly in America convened in Jamestown, Va.
In 1729, the city of Baltimore was founded.
In 1792, the French national anthem "La Marseillaise," by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, was first sung in Paris by troops arriving from Marseille.
In 1844, the New York Yacht Club was founded.
In 1864, during the Civil War, Union forces tried to take Petersburg, Va., by exploding a gunpowder-filled mine under Confederate defense lines. The attack failed.
In 1932, the Summer Olympic Games opened in Los Angeles.
In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill creating a women's auxiliary agency in the Navy known as "Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service"
-- WAVES for short.'
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Medicare bill, which went into effect the following year.
In 1975, former Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in suburban Detroit
-- although presumed dead, his remains have never been found.
In 1980, the Israeli Knesset passed a law reaffirming all of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state.
Ten years ago: Two men bombed Jerusalem's most crowded outdoor market, killing themselves and 16 others. Eighteen people, including two Americans, were killed in a landslide that swept one ski lodge onto another at the Thredbo Alpine Village in southeast Australia.
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 Five years ago: President George W. Bush signed into law the most far-reaching government crackdown on business fraud since the Depression. Expelled from Congress a week earlier, an unrepentant James A. Traficant Jr. was sentenced to eight years behind bars for corruption and made it clear he intended to run for re-election from his prison cell
-- and expected to win. (He didn't.) Pope John Paul II canonized Pedro de San Jose Betancur, Central America's first saint. WNBA player Lisa Leslie became the first woman to dunk in a professional game, jamming on a breakaway in the first half of the Los Angeles Sparks' 82-73 loss to the Miami Sol.
One year ago: Israel agreed to a 48-hour suspension of aerial activity over southern Lebanon after its bombing of a Lebanese village that killed 29 people. Congo held its first multiparty election in four decades (incumbent President Joseph Kabila later won a runoff).
Today's birthdays: Actor Dick Wilson ("Mr. Whipple") is 91. Actor Richard Johnson is 80. Actor Edd "Kookie" Byrnes is 74. Blues musician Buddy Guy is 71. Movie director Peter Bogdanovich is 68. Feminist activist Eleanor Smeal is 68. Former U.S. Rep. Patricia Schroeder, D-Colo., is 67. Singer Paul Anka is 66. Jazz musician David Sanborn is 62. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is 60. Actor William Atherton is 60. Actor Jean Reno is 59. Blues singer-musician Otis Taylor is 59. Actor Frank Stallone is 57. Actor Ken Olin is 53. Actress Delta Burke is 51. Singer-songwriter Kate Bush is 49. Country singer Neal McCoy is 49. Actor Richard Burgi is 49. Director Richard Linklater is 47. Actor Laurence Fishburne is 46. Actress Lisa Kudrow is 44. Bluegrass musician Danny Roberts (The Grascals) is 44. Country musician Dwayne O'Brien is 43. Actress Vivica A. Fox is 43. Actor Terry Crews ("Everybody Hates Chris") is 39. Actor Simon Baker is 38. Movie director Christopher Nolan is 37. Actor Tom Green is 36. Actress Christine Taylor is 36. Actor-comedian Dean Edwards is 34. Actress Hilary Swank is 33. Actress Jaime Pressly is 30.
Thought for today: "If bread is the first necessity of life, recreation is a close second."
-- Edward Bellamy, American author (1850-1898).
[Associated
Press]
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