Today in History: July 30, USS Indianapolis is torpedoed

Today in History Today is Saturday, July 30, the 211th day of 2022. There are 154 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On July 30, 1945, the Portland class heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis, having just delivered components of the atomic bomb to Tinian in the Mariana Islands, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine; only 317 out of nearly 1,200 men survived. On this date: In 1619, the first representative assembly in America convened in Jamestown in the Virginia Colony. In 1729, Baltimore, Maryland, was founded. In 1864, during the Civil War, Union forces tried to take Petersburg, Virginia, by exploding a gunpowder-laden mine shaft beneath Confederate defense lines; the attack failed. In 1916, German saboteurs blew up a munitions plant on Black Tom, an island near Jersey City, New Jersey, killing about a dozen people. In 1918, poet Joyce Kilmer, a sergeant in the 165th U.S. Infantry Regiment, was killed during the Second Battle of the Marne in World War I. (Kilmer is remembered for his poem ‘œTrees.’�) In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a measure making ‘œIn God We Trust’� the national motto, replacing ‘œE Pluribus Unum’� (Out of many, one). In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a measure creating Medicare, which began operating the following year. In 1980, Israel’s Knesset passed a law reaffirming all of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state. In 2008, ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic (RA’-doh-van KA’-ra-jich) was extradited to The Hague to face genocide charges after nearly 13 years on the run. (He was sentenced by a U.N. court in 2019 to life imprisonment after being convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.) In 2010, the Afghan Taliban confirmed the death of longtime leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and appointed his successor, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor. In 2016, 16 people died when a hot air balloon caught fire and exploded after hitting high-tension power lines before crashing into a pasture near Lockhart, Texas, about 60 miles northeast of San Antonio. In 2020, John Lewis was eulogized in Atlanta by three former presidents and others who urged Americans to continue the work of the civil rights icon in fighting injustice during a moment of racial reckoning. Herman Cain, a former Republican presidential candidate and former CEO of a pizza chain who became an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump, died in Atlanta of complications from the coronavirus at the age of 74; he was hospitalized less than two weeks after attending Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he was photographed not wearing a mask. Ten years ago: Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney, on a visit to Israel, outraged Palestinians by telling Jewish donors that their culture was part of the reason Israel was more economically successful than the Palestinians. At the London Olympics, American teenager Missy Franklin won the women’s 100-meter backstroke before Matt Grevers led a 1-2 finish for the U.S. in the men’s race. Five years ago: Three days after the U.S. Congress approved sanctions against Russia in response to its meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and its military aggression in Ukraine and Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the United States would have to cut the number of embassy and consulate staff in Russia by 755.