| On this date in: |
| 1858 |
A telegraphed message from Britain’s Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan was transmitted over the recently laid trans-Atlantic cable. |
| 1888 |
T.E. Lawrence, the British soldier who gained fame as “Lawrence of Arabia,” was born in Tremadoc, Wales. |
| 1913 |
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was born in Brest-Litovsk in present-day Belarus. |
| 1948 |
Baseball Hall of Famer Babe Ruth died at age 53. |
| 1954 |
Sports Illustrated was first published by Time Inc. |
| 1956 |
Adlai E. Stevenson was nominated for president at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. |
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| AP Photo |
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| 1960 |
Britain granted independence to Cyprus. |
| 1987 |
Thousands of people worldwide began a two-day celebration of the “harmonic convergence,” which believers called the start of a new, purer age of humankind. |
| 1988 |
Vice President George H.W. Bush tapped Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle to be his running mate on the Republican ticket. |
| 2000 |
Delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles nominated Vice President Al Gore for president. |
| 2002 |
Terrorist mastermind Abu Nidal was found shot to death in Baghdad, Iraq. |
| 2003 |
Idi Amin, the former dictator of Uganda, died in Saudi Arabia. |
| 2007 |
Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen held for 3-1/2 years as an enemy combatant, was convicted in Miami of helping Islamic extremists and plotting overseas attacks. (He was sentenced to 17 years, four months in prison.) |
| 2008 |
Michael Phelps won the 100-meter butterfly by a hundredth of a second for his seventh gold medal of the Beijing Olympics, tying Mark Spitz’s 1972 record. |
| 2008 |
Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres and actress Portia de Rossi were married at their Beverly Hills, Calif., home. |
| 2010 |
China eclipsed Japan as the world’s second biggest economy after three decades of blistering growth. |
