Today in History....August 1

On this day in …


* 1774, British scientist Joseph Priestley succeeded in isolating
oxygen from air

* 1894, the First Sino-Japanese War erupted, the result of a dispute
over control of Korea; Japan's army routed the Chinese

* 1907, the U.S. Air Force had its beginnings as the U.S. Army
Signal Corps established an aeronautical division in charge of "all
matters pertaining to military ballooning, air machines and all
kindred subjects."

* 1914, Germany declared war on Russia at the onset of World War I

* 1944, an uprising broke out in Warsaw, Poland, against Nazi,
ym"sh, occupation, a revolt that lasted two months before collapsing

* 1946, President Harry S. Truman signed the Fulbright Program into
law, establishing the scholarships named for Sen. William J.
Fulbright

* 1957, the United States and Canada agreed to create the North
American Air Defense Command (NORAD)

* 1966, 25-year-old Charles Joseph Whitman went on a shooting
rampage at the University of Texas in Austin, killing 14 people.
Whitman, who had also murdered his wife and mother hours earlier,
was gunned down by police

* 1997, the National Cancer Institute reported that fallout from
1950s nuclear bomb tests had exposed millions of children across the
country to radioactive iodine. ALSO: President Bill Clinton lifted a
20-year-old ban on the sale of high-performance aircraft and other
advanced weapons to Latin America.

* 2002, two former WorldCom executives were arrested on charges of
falsifying the books at the now-bankrupt long-distance company.
ALSO: The United States and a bloc of Southeast Asian nations signed
a sweeping anti-terrorism treaty

* 2006, Mel Gibson issued a statement in which he denied being a
bigot; he also apologized to "everyone in the Jewish community for
the vitriolic and harmful words" he'd used when he was arrested for
investigation of drunken driving. ALSO: Fidel Castro released a
statement a day after temporarily ceding power to his brother Raul
in which he sought to reassure Cubans that his health was stable
after intestinal surgery.