Today is Wednesday, Aug. 2, the 214th day of 2017. There are 151 days left in the year.
Birthdays: Actor Nehemiah Persoff is 98. Rock musician Garth Hudson (The Band) is 80. Singer Kathy Lennon (The Lennon Sisters) is 74. Actor Butch Patrick (TV: ‘‘The Munsters”) is 64. Actress Apollonia is 58. Actress Mary-Louise Parker is 53. Actor Sam Worthington is 41. Figure skater Michael Weiss is 41. TV meteorologist Dylan Dreyer (TV: ‘‘Today”) is 36. Actress Hallie Eisenberg is 25.
In 216 B.C., during the Second Punic War, Carthaginian forces led by Hannibal defeated the Roman army in the Battle of Cannae.
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In 1776, members of the Second Continental Congress began attaching their signatures to the Declaration of Independence.
In 1876, frontiersman ‘‘Wild Bill’’ Hickok was shot and killed while playing poker at a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, by Jack McCall, who was later hanged.
In 1939, Albert Einstein signed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging creation of an atomic weapons research program.
In 1943, during World War II, U.S. Navy boat PT-109, commanded by Lt. John F. Kennedy, sank after being rammed t by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri off the Solomon Islands. Two crew members were killed.
In 1985, 137 people were killed when Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, crashed while attempting to land in Dallas.
In 2012, Kofi Annan resigned as peace envoy to Syria, blaming the Syrian government’s intransigence, the growing militancy of Syrian rebels and a divided U.N. Security Council that he said failed to back him.
Last year, President Obama castigated Donald Trump as ‘‘unfit’’ and ‘‘woefully unprepared’’ to serve in the White House, and challenged Republicans to withdraw their support for their party’s nominee, declaring ‘‘there has to come a point at which you say ‘enough.’’’
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