1893 – Tornado destroys the coast of Savannah, Georgia & Charleston, South Carolina; about 1,000 die.
1909 – Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal.
1912 – Ticker-tape parade held in New York City for Jim Thorpe and victorious United States Olympians.
1932 – 1st transcontinental non-stop flight by a woman. Amelia Earhart begins in Los Angeles, California.
1936 – President Franklin Roosevelt gives the FBI the authority to gather intelligence on fascist and communist groups.
1943 – Philadelphia A’s drop AL record tying 20th game in a row, win the 2nd game of a doubleheader.
1945 – Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians ace Bob Feller returns from serving in the US Navy and strikes out 12.
1954 – President Dwight Eisenhower signs Communist Control Act, outlawing the Communist Party, at the height of McCarthyism.
1962 – Los Angeles Dodgers coach Leo Durocher suffers a near-fatal allergic reaction to a penicillin injection while in the clubhouse at the Polo Grounds in New York City.
1965 – Soviet Union launches Luna 11 for orbit around Mars.
1969 – Peru nationalizes US oil interests.
1975 – PGA Tournament of Players Championship, Colonial CC: Al Geiberger leads wire-to-wire to finish 3 strokes ahead of runner-up Dave Stockton.
1980 – Revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical “Oklahoma” closes at Palace Theater in New York City after 293 performances.
1989 – Pete Rose is suspended from baseball for life for gambling.
1991 – Ukraine declares independence from the Soviet Union.
1995 – Microsoft debuts Windows 95.
2004 – Americans Kerri Walsh and Misty May team up to win the women’s beach volleyball gold at the Athens Olympics, beating Brazilian pair Shelda Bede & Adriana Behar 21-17, 21-11.
2008 – Summer Olympics in Beijing becomes the most watched event on TV, ever – nearly 5 billion, 70% of the world’s population.
2015 – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces that for the first time 1 billion people logged into Facebook.
2022 – President Joe Biden announces plan to cancel school loan debts by $10,000 (for those earning less than $125,000) and $20,000 for those who had received Pell grants. The plan was challenged in court.
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