Today’s Highlight in History:
On Aug. 28, 1963, more than 200,000 people listened as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
On this date:
In 1862, the Second Battle of Bull Run (also known as Second Manassas) began in Prince William County, Virginia, during the Civil War; the result was a Confederate victory.
In 1922, the first-ever radio commercial aired on station WEAF in New York City; the 10-minute advertisement was for the Queensboro Realty Co., which had paid a fee of $100.
In 1941, Japan’s ambassador to the U.S., Kichisaburo Nomura, presented a note to President Franklin D. Roosevelt from Japan’s prime minister, Prince Fumimaro Konoye, expressing a desire for improved relations.
In 1955, Emmett Till, a Black teen from Chicago, was abducted from his uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi, by two white men after he had supposedly whistled at a white woman; he was found brutally slain three days later.
In 1968, police and anti-war demonstrators clashed in the streets of Chicago as the Democratic National Convention nominated Hubert H. Humphrey for president.
In 1988, 70 people were killed when three Italian stunt planes collided during an air show at the U.S. Air Base in Ramstein (RAHM’-shtyn), West Germany.
In 1996, the troubled 15-year marriage of Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana officially ended with the issuing of a divorce decree.
In 2005, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (NAY’-gin) ordered everyone in the city to evacuate after Hurricane Katrina grew to a monster storm.
In 2013, a military jury sentenced Maj. Nidal Hasan to death for the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood that claimed 13 lives. On the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.‘s “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial, President Barack Obama stood on the same steps as he challenged new generations to seize the cause of racial equality.
In 2016, six scientists completed a yearlong Mars simulation in Hawaii, where they emerged after living in a dome in near isolation on a Mauna Loa mountain.
In 2018, a white former police officer, Roy Oliver, was convicted of murder for fatally shooting a Black 15-year-old boy, Jordan Edwards, while firing into a car packed with teenagers in suburban Dallas; Oliver was sentenced the following day to 15 years in prison.
In 2020, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said he was stepping down because a chronic illness had resurfaced. (Abe was succeeded by his right-hand man, Yoshihide Suga. Abe was assassinated in July 2022.)