CARLATA BRADLEY

On this day in 2001, President George W. Bush signs the renewal of
the U.S. Patriot Act after a long battle with Congress.

Pat Sajak (Patrick Leonard Sajdak) is 73 today. 

Sajak is a former weatherman and talk show host, best
known as the host of the syndicated television game
show Wheel of Fortune.

“Wheel of Fortune” hosts Pat Sajak and Vanna White.

“

CARLATA BRADLEY

The D.C. sniper attacks (also known as the Beltway sniper attacks) were
a series of coordinated shootings that occurred during three weeks in
October 2002 in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. Ten
people were killed and three others were critically wounded in the
Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area and along Interstate 95
in Virginia.

The snipers were John Allen Muhammad (aged 41 at the time) and Lee
Boyd Malvo (aged 17 at the time), who traveled in a blue 1990 Chevrolet
Caprice sedan. Their crime spree, begun in February 2002, included
murders and robberies in the states of Alabama, Arizona, Florida,
Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, and Washington, which resulted in seven
deaths and seven wounded people; in ten months, the snipers killed
17 people and wounded 10 others.

In September 2003, Muhammad was sentenced to death, and in October,
the juvenile, Malvo, was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences
without parole. In November 2009, Muhammad was put to death by
lethal injection.

 
Law enforcement officers search the car that John Allen Muhammad
and John Lee Malvo were in when police arrested them at a rest stop along I-70 west of Myersville.

 
"The Bushmaster rifle used by the convicted snipers.

View of anti-Vietnam war protestors around the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool on 21 October 1967

In Washington, D.C. nearly 100,000 people gather to protest the American war
effort in Vietnam. More than 50,000 of the protesters marched to the Pentagon
to ask for an end to the conflict. The protest was the most dramatic sign of
waning U.S. support for President Lyndon Johnson’s war in Vietnam. Polls
taken in the summer of 1967 revealed that, for the first time, American
support for the war had fallen below 50 percent.

Outside the Pentagon during the 1967 demonstrations.

A scuffle between the military police and protesters outside the
Pentagon (above & below).      

Akagi Japanese aircraft carrier.

Deep-sea explorers and historians on Sunday announced they apparently
found a second World War II-era Japanese aircraft carrier that sank during
the Battle of Midway.

Director of undersea operations for Vulcan Ind. Rob Kraft said a review of
sonar data captured Sunday showed either the Japanese carrier Akagi
or the Soryu resting in nearly 18,000 feet of water in the Pacific Ocean
more than 1,300 miles northwest of Pearl Harbor. Hawaii. 

The researchers used an autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV,
equipped with sonar to find the ship. The vehicle had been out
overnight collecting data, and the image of a warship appeared in
the first set of readings on Sunday morning.

Officials said the crew planned to deploy the AUV for another eight-hour
mission where it will capture high-resolution sonar images of the site to
measure the ship and confirm its identity.  
     
The finding came on the heels of last week’s discovery, another Japanese
aircraft carrier, the Kaga, which U.S. forces also sank during the Battle of
Midway in June 1942.

Until now, only one of the seven ships that went down in the air-and-sea
battle, five Japanese vessels and two American ships, had been found.

.

ROSS SIMPSON

On this day in 1927,  "The Jazz Singer" opened in New York starring Al
Jolson. The film was based on the short story "The Day of Atonement"
by Sampson Raphaelson. It is the first feature-length motion picture
with not only a synchronized recorded music score but also lip-
synchronous singing and speech in several isolated sequences