| On this date in: |
| 1915 | A mob in Cobb County, Ga., lynched Jewish businessman Leo Frank, whose death sentence for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan had been commuted to life imprisonment. |
| 1943 | The Allied conquest of Sicily was completed as U.S. and British forces entered Messina. |
| 1945 | Indonesian nationalists declared independence from the Netherlands. |
| 1948 | Former State Department official Alger Hiss faced his chief accuser, Whittaker Chambers, during a closed-door meeting of the House Un-American Activities Committee in New York. Hiss repeated his denial that he'd ever been a Communist agent. |
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| 1962 | East German border guards shot and mortally wounded 18-year-old Peter Fechter, who had attempted to cross over the Berlin Wall into the western sector. |
| 1969 | Hurricane Camille slammed into the Gulf Coast, killing 248 people. |
| 1987 | Rudolf Hess, the last member of Adolf Hitler's inner circle, died at Spandau prison in West Berlin at age 93, having apparently committed suicide by strangling himself with an electrical cord. He had been the only inmate at Spandau for 21 years. |
| 1992 | Actor-director Woody Allen admitted being romantically involved with Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his longtime companion, actress Mia Farrow. |
| 1998 | President Bill Clinton underwent grand jury questioning in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. |
| 1998 | Russia devalued the ruble. |
| 2000 | The Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles nominated Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman for vice president. |
| 2002 | Pope John Paul II arrived in Krakow, Poland, for the ninth and final visit to his native country during his papacy. |
| 2005 | Israeli security forces began the forcible removal of Jews from four settlements in the Gaza Strip. |
| 2008 | Michael Phelps and three teammates won the 400-meter medley relay for Phelps' record-breaking eighth gold medal at the Beijing Olympics. |
