Today’s Highlight in History

On August 1, 1957, the United States and Canada announced they had agreed to create the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).

On this date

In 1714, Britain’s Queen Anne died at age 49; she was succeeded by George I.

In 1876, Colorado was admitted as the 38th state.

In 1907, the U.S. Army Signal Corps established an aeronautical division, the forerunner of the U.S. Air Force.

In 1936, the Olympics opened in Berlin with a ceremony presided over by Adolf Hitler.

In 1944, an uprising broke out in Warsaw, Poland, against Nazi occupation; the revolt lasted two months before collapsing.

In 1947, Mickey Spillane’s first novel, “I, the Jury,” featuring the debut of private eye Mike Hammer, was published.

In 1966, Charles Joseph Whitman, 25, went on an armed rampage at the University of Texas in Austin that killed 14 people, most of whom were shot by Whitman while he was perched in the clock tower of the main campus building. (Whitman, who had also slain his wife and mother hours earlier, was finally gunned down by police.)

In 1975, a 35-nation summit in Finland concluded with the signing of a declaration known as the Helsinki Accords dealing with European security, human rights and East-West contacts.

In 1977, former U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, working as a traffic reporter for KNBC-TV in Los Angeles, was killed with his cameraman, George Spears, when their helicopter ran out of fuel and crashed; Powers was 47.

In 1981, the rock music video channel MTV made its debut.

In 1994, Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley confirmed they’d been secretly married 11 weeks earlier. (Presley filed for divorce from Jackson in Jan. 1996, citing irreconcilable differences.)

The Associated Press