Sunday, August 30, 2020

TODAY IN CRIME: August 31

 
1778 British soldiers massacred 17 members of the Stockbridge militia in the Bronx during the American Revolution. The militia consisted of mostly Mahican, Wappinger, and Munsee Native Americans who sided with the colonists.

1888 London police found Mary Ann Nichols, a prostitute, dead in the East End. She is considered to be Jack the Ripper's first victim.

1894 In New Zealand, the Liberal government of Richard Seddon passed the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, making New Zealand the first country in the world to outlaw strikes and force arbitration.

1911 The "Sullivan Act" came into effect, requiring New Yorkers to possess licenses for firearms small enough to be concealed.

1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an act prohibiting the export of U.S. arms to belligerents.

1959 A parcel bomb sent by Ngô Đình Nhu, younger brother and chief adviser of South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm, failed to kill King Norodom Sihanouk of neighboring Cambodia. The king’s chief of protocol, Prince Norodom Vakrivan, opened the box supposedly containing a gift from American friends and was killed instantly, along with a servant.

1970 A Connecticut jury convicted Black Panther activist Lonnie McLucas to 12-15 years for the murder of Black Panther Alex Rackley, a suspected FBI informant.

1970 33 Dutch extremists fighting for Moluccan autonomy in Indonesia (formerly Dutch East Indies) invaded the home of the Indonesian ambassador in Wassenaar, a suburb of The Hague, to protest the proposed visit of Indonesian dictator Suharto to the Netherlands. A policeman, Officer Molenaar, was killed but no one was ever arrested.

1974 John Lennon testified in U.S. federal court that the administration of U.S. President Nixon tried to have him deported because of his involvement with the anti-war demonstrations at the 1972 Republican convention in Miami, FL. Lennon finally got his green card in 1976.

1976 A New York judge ruled Beatle George Harrison guilty of plagiarizing the song "He’s So Fine" (composed by Ronald Mack and recorded by the Chiffons) in his hit “My Sweet Lord.”

1980 Poland's Solidarity labor movement began when the government and trade unions signed an agreement ending a 17-day strike in Gdansk. Solidarity grew to include 25% of the country's population and was thus able to become a lobby for national reform.

1985 Residents of an East Los Angeles neighborhood captured California's "Night Stalker" killer Richard Ramirez.

1988 Arbitrator George Nicolau ruled the owners of Major League Baseball teams colluded to restrict bidding for free agents. On the same day a year later, arbitrator Thomas T. Roberts ordered owners to pay $105 million for the collusion; in 1990, management finally agreed with the players' union to pay those players affected $280 million.

1990 East and West Germany signed a treaty to join legal and political systems.

1992 White separatist Randy Weaver surrendered to authorities in Idaho, ending an 11-day siege. Weaver's wife and son and a deputy U.S. marshal were killed during the siege.

1997 Britain's Princess Diana, her companion Dodi Fayed, and driver Henri Paul died in a car crash in Paris.

1999 The first in the “9/99” bombings in Moscow occurred at the shopping mall on Manezhnaya Square. One person died and 40 others were wounded. The bombings, blamed variously on the Federal Security Service and GRU or Arab militants fighting on the side of Chechen insurgents, continued until September 16 and killed 367 and injured more than 1,000.

2005 953 people died following a stampede on the Al-Aaimmah bridge across the Tigres River in Baghdad. A million Shia pilgrims were making their way to the Musa al-Kazi shrine when rumors of a suicide bomber ran rampant through the crowd, causing hundreds to rush to the bridge. (Hours before, an Al-Qaeda insurgent group killed seven and wounded dozens more in a mortar attack on the crowd.) Hundreds were trampled and suffocated trying to get to the other end of the bridge, which was closed off. Many fell into the river and drowned. Members of the public blamed Defense Ministers for improperly securing the area but no one resigned or received any punishment.

2006 Norwegian police recovered Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream in a raid. Stolen two years before, the painting was said to be in a better-than-expected condition.

2006 Iran defied a U.N. deadline to stop enriching uranium. The U.N. council stipulated, however, that it would not impose sanctions without further negotiations.

2012 Armenia severed diplomatic relations with Hungary, after Hungary pardoned Ramil Safarov. Safarov had been convicted of killing an Armenian soldier in 2004.

2012 A Tokyo court ruled Samsung's Galaxy smartphones and tablets did not violate Apple patents and awarded legal costs to Samsung.

2016 The Brazilian Senate found President Dilma Rousseff guilty of violating Brazil's federal budget laws and voted 61-20 to remove her from office.

2019 Oil worker Seth Aaron Ator, fired from his job, went on a shooting spree with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in Midland and Odessa, Texas, killing seven and injuring 22 more. Ator bought the rifle privately, having failed a background check because of a "mental health issue." When police caught up with him at a movie complex in Odessa, he opened fire and wounded two officers before officers shot him dead.

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