SANDY KOZEL

On this day in 1961, Berlin was divided by a barbed wire fence to halt
the flight of refugees. Two days later work on the Berlin Wall began.

CARLATA BRADLEY

On this day in 1972, the last U.S. combat troops depart Vietnam.

Dustin Lee Hoffman

Dustin Hoffman is a renowned method actor who won the Academy
Award for Best Actor for Kramer vs. Kramer in 1979 and Rain Man
in 1988. He had his breakthrough role as Benjamin Braddock in the
1967 classic The Graduate and also played leading roles in the films
Midnight Cowboy (1969), Tootsie (1982) and Outbreak (1996).  

MIKE GRACIA

On August 1, 1966, after stabbing his mother and his wife to death
the night before, Charles Whitman,(above) a former Marine, took
rifles and other weapons to the observation deck atop the Main
Building tower at the University of Texas at Austin, then opened
fire indiscriminately on persons on the surrounding campus and
streets. Over the next 96 minutes he shot and killed 16 people
(including one unborn child) and injured 31 others; a final victim
died in 2001 from the lingering effects of his wounds. The incident
ended when a policeman and a civilian reached Whitman and shot
him dead. The attack was the deadliest mass shooting by a lone
gunman in U.S. history until it was surpassed 18 years later by the
San Ysidro McDonald’s massacre.

The University of Texas at Austin Tower, Austin, Texas.

ED DANAHUE

The American space probe Ranger 7 transmitted pictures of the
moon’s surface on this day in 1964. It was the first space probe 
of the United States to successfully transmit close images of
the lunar surface back to Earth. It was also the first completely
successful flight of the Ranger program.