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Aug. 7
Today in history
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1782: Gen. George Washington created the first U.S. military decoration, the Badge of Military Merit, now called the Purple Heart. Noncommissioned officers and privates were eligible, not just high-ranking officers. “The road to glory in a patriot army and a free country is thus open to all,” Washington wrote.
1912: The dissident Bull Moose Party nominated former President Teddy Roosevelt for president after Republicans declined to do so. Officially called the Progressive Party, it got its nickname when Roosevelt told reporters he felt as strong as a “bull moose.” It advocated women’s suffrage and the direct election of senators.
1942: The United States began its first offensive of World War II, Operation Watchtower. About 11,000 members of the 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal, one of the Solomon Islands, taking Japanese defenders by surprise and securing an important airstrip.
1947: The Kon-Tiki crashed into a coral reef in the Tuamotu Islands after carrying Thor Heyerdahl and his five-member crew more than 4,000 miles from Peru. The explorer built the balsa wood raft to show that people could have made the trip in prehistory.
1948: Alice Coachman became the first Black woman to win an Olympic gold medal, and she did so in a single bound: She jumped 5 feet, 6⅛ inches (1.68 m) on her first try in the high jump in London. Coachman also broke high school and college records in high jump, won national sprint championships and led the Tuskegee basketball team to three conference championships.
1964: Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution 416-0 in the House and 88-2 in the Senate. It gave President Lyndon B. Johnson broad powers to oppose “communist aggression” in Southeast Asia and allowed the escalation of the Vietnam War.
1974: Tightrope artist Philippe Petit spent almost an hour walking, sitting and even bowing on a high wire 1,350 feet above New York City, slung between the newly built World Trade Center towers. He was arrested, but the charges were dismissed on the condition that he stage a show for the public − much closer to the ground.
1978: President Jimmy Carter declared a health emergency for the Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, and Gov. Hugh Carey announced the government would buy homes made toxic by chemicals seeping from a landfill. It was one of the worst chemical-waste disasters in U.S. history.
1987: Lynne Cox made the first recorded swim across the Bering Strait, swimming in 38-degree water from the United States to the Soviet Union as a gesture of peace. “For the first time in 48 years, the border was open,” she later said.
1990: President George H.W. Bush ordered Operation Desert Shield in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. It mobilized U.S. troops to defend Saudi Arabia as part of a 35-nation coalition that later went into combat in Desert Storm.
2018: “Crazy Rich Asians,” the first contemporary major-studio film with an all-Asian main cast in 25 years, premiered at TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. It grossed $239 million worldwide.
– USA TODAY Network
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Today in history, August 7
