Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date

1718

Hundreds of French colonists arrived in Louisiana, with some of them settling in present-day New Orleans.

1825

Uruguay declared its independence from Brazil.

1875

Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel, traveling from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in 22 hours.

1916

The National Park Service was established within the Department of the Interior.

1919

The first regular international passenger air service took place between London and Paris. This fledgling flight, operated by Air Transport & Travel took off from Hounslow Heath, not far from what's now Heathrow Airport.

1921

The United States signed a peace treaty with Germany.

1943

U.S. forces overran New Georgia in the Solomon Islands during World War II.

1944

Paris was liberated by Allied forces after four years of Nazi occupation.

1950

President Truman ordered the Army to seize control of the nation's railroads to avert a strike.

1981

The U.S. spacecraft Voyager 2 came within 63,000 miles of Saturn's cloud cover, sending back pictures and data about the ringed planet.

1984

Author Truman Capote was found dead in a Los Angeles mansion; he was 59.

1997

The tobacco industry agreed to an $11.3 billion settlement with the state of Florida.

2017

Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in Texas as a powerful Category 4 hurricane, the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the United States since 2004. Over the next few days, the storm causes catastrophic flooding throughout much of eastern Texas, killing 106 people and causing $125 billion in damage.

1985

Samantha Smith, the schoolgirl whose letter to Yuri V. Andropov resulted in her famous peace tour of the Soviet Union, was killed with her father in an airplane crash in Maine.

1998

Retired Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell died in Richmond, Va., at age 90.

2022

Mable John, American blues vocalist and was the first female artist signed by Berry Gordy to Motown's Tamla label. (b. 1930)