Today in History: August 12, Charlottesville car attack
FILE - In this Aug. 12, 2017, photo by Ryan Kelly of The Daily Progress, people fly into the air as a car drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. (Ryan Kelly/The Daily Progress via AP)
Today in history:
On Aug. 12, 2017, a driver sped into a crowd of people peacefully protesting a white nationalist rally in the Virginia college town of Charlottesville, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring more than a dozen others. (The attacker, James Alex Fields, was sentenced to life in prison on 29 federal hate crime charges, and life plus 419 years on state charges.)
Also on this date:
In 1867, President Andrew Johnson sparked a move to impeach him as he defied Congress by suspending Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, with whom he had clashed over Reconstruction policies. (Johnson was acquitted by the Senate.)
In 1898, fighting in the Spanish-American War came to an end.
In 1909, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home to the Indianapolis 500, first opened.
Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. ,son of the former US ambassador to Great Britain, poses beside the propeller of a plane at the Squadrun Naval Air Base, at Squantum, Mass., near Boston where he started training on July 15,1941. During World War II, Joseph Kennedy Jr., was killed in action on Aug. 12, 1944, when the plane he was flying exploded on a mission over the English Channel. (AP Photo)
Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. ,son of the former US ambassador to Great Britain, poses beside the propeller of a plane at the Squadrun Naval Air Base, at Squantum, Mass., near Boston where he started training on July 15,1941. During World War II, Joseph Kennedy Jr., was killed in action on Aug. 12, 1944, when the plane he was flying exploded on a mission over the English Channel. (AP Photo)
In 1944, during World War II, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., eldest son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was killed with his co-pilot when their explosives-laden Navy plane blew up over England.
In 1953, the Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.
In 1960, the first balloon communications satellite — the Echo 1 — was launched by the United States from Cape Canaveral.
In 1981, IBM introduced its first personal computer, the model 5150, at a press conference in New York.
In 1985, the world’s worst single-aircraft disaster occurred as a crippled Japan Airlines Boeing 747 on a domestic flight crashed into a mountain, killing 520 people. Four passengers survived.
In 1990, fossil collector Sue Hendrickson found one of the largest and best preserved Tyrannosaurus Rex skeletons ever discovered; nicknamed “Sue” after Hendrickson, the skeleton is now on display at Chicago’s Field Museum.
In 1994, in baseball’s eighth work stoppage since 1972, players went on strike rather than allow team owners to limit their salaries.
Crew members of the nuclear submarine Kursk, one of Russia’s largest and most advanced submarines, stand on the ship deck during the naval parade in Severomorsk, Russia, July 30, 2000. (AP Photo)
Crew members of the nuclear submarine Kursk, one of Russia’s largest and most advanced submarines, stand on the ship deck during the naval parade in Severomorsk, Russia, July 30, 2000. (AP Photo)
In 2000, the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk and its 118-man crew were lost during naval exercises in the Barents Sea.
In 2013, James “Whitey” Bulger, the feared Boston mob boss who became one of the nation’s most-wanted fugitives, was convicted in a string of 11 killings and dozens of other gangland crimes, many of them committed while he was said to be an FBI informant. (Bulger was sentenced to life; he was fatally beaten at a West Virginia prison in 2018, hours after being transferred from a facility in Florida.)
Author Salman Rushdie poses for a portrait to promote his book “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder”, at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Author Salman Rushdie poses for a portrait to promote his book “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder”, at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
In 2022, Salman Rushdie, the author whose writing led to death threats from Iran in the 1980s, was stabbed by a man who rushed the stage as Rushdie was about to give a lecture in western New York.
