Today is Tuesday, July 12, the 194th day of 2016. There are 172 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On July 12, 1984, Democratic presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale announced his choice of U.S. Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York to be his runningmate; Ferraro was the first woman to run for vice president on a major-party ticket.

On this date

In 1543, England’s King Henry VIII married his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr.

In 1862, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill authorizing the Army Medal of Honor.

In 1909, the House of Representatives joined the Senate in passing the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, allowing for a federal income tax, and submitted it to the states. (It was declared ratified in February 1913.)

In 1948, the Democratic National Convention, which nominated President Harry S. Truman for a second term of office, opened in Philadelphia.

In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was flown by helicopter from the White House to a secret mountaintop location as part of a drill involving a mock nuclear attack on Washington.

In 1965, the Beach Boys single “California Girls” was released by Capitol Records.

In 1967, six days of race-related rioting erupted in Newark, New Jersey; the violence claimed 26 lives.

In 1975, the African island nation of San Tome and Principe became independent of Portugal.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter defended Supreme Court limits on government payments for poor women’s abortions, saying, “There are many things in life that are not fair.”

In 1988, Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis tapped Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas as his runningmate.

In 1991, a Japanese professor (Hitoshi Igarashi) who had translated Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” was found stabbed to death, nine days after the novel’s Italian translator was attacked in Milan.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton, visiting Germany, went to the eastern sector of Berlin, the first U.S. president to do so since Harry Truman.

Ten years ago: Hezbollah guerrillas kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in a cross-border raid. (The bodies of the kidnapped soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, were returned to Israel in 2008 in exchange for five Lebanese militants.)

Five years ago: President Barack Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Arthur Petry, who’d lost his right hand grabbing a live grenade to save his comrades in Afghanistan. Ahmed Wali Karzai, the powerful half-brother of President Hamid Karzai, was gunned down in his heavily fortified home by a close associate. A memorial service for former first lady Betty Ford in Palm Desert, California, was attended by Michelle Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rosalynn Carter and former President George W. Bush.

The Associated Press

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