Today is Friday, Aug. 2, the 215th day of 2024. There are 151 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On August 2, 1921, a jury in Chicago acquitted several former members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team and two others of conspiring to defraud the public in the notorious “Black Sox” scandal (though they would be banned from Major League Baseball for life by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis).
Also on this date:
In 1776, members of the Second Continental Congress began attaching their signatures to the Declaration of Independence.
In 1790, the first United States Census was conducted under the supervision of Thomas Jefferson; a total of 3,929,214 U.S. residents were counted.
In 1873, inventor Andrew S. Hallidie successfully tested a cable car he had designed for the city of San Francisco.
In 1876, frontiersman “Wild Bill” Hickok was shot and killed while playing poker at a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, by Jack McCall, who was later hanged.
On Aug. 2, 1923, the 29th president of the United States, Warren G. Harding, died in San Francisco; Vice President Calvin Coolidge became president.
In 1934, German President Paul von Hindenburg died, paving the way for Adolf Hitler’s complete takeover.
In 1939, Albert Einstein signed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging creation of an atomic weapons research program.
In 1945, President Harry S. Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and Britain’s new prime minister, Clement Attlee, concluded the Potsdam conference.
In 1974, former White House counsel John W. Dean III was sentenced to one to four years in prison for obstruction of justice in the Watergate cover-up. (Dean ended up serving four months.)
In 1985, 137 people were killed when Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, crashed while attempting to land at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, seizing control of the oil-rich emirate. (The Iraqis were later driven out by the U.S. in Operation Desert Storm.)
In 2018, Pope Francis decreed that the death penalty is “inadmissible” under all circumstances and the Catholic Church should campaign to abolish it.
Today’s Birthdays: Rock musician Garth Hudson (The Band) is 87. Author Isabel Allende is 82. Singer Kathy Lennon (The Lennon Sisters) is 81. Actor Butch Patrick (TV: “The Munsters”) is 71. Rock music producer/drummer Butch Vig is 69. Actor Mary-Louise Parker is 60. Writer-actor-director Kevin Smith is 54. Actor Sam Worthington is 48. Actor Edward Furlong is 47. TV meteorologist Dylan Dreyer (TV: “Today”) is 43. Actor Lily Gladstone is 38. WNBA point guard Skylar Diggins-Smith is 34. Singer Charli XCX is 32. Olympic swimming gold medalist Simone Manuel is 28.
