On this day: August 7
POSTED: 02:38 PM PDT Aug 06, 2012
UPDATED: 11:00 PM PDT Aug 06, 2012
The Purple Heart is born, a comic legend dies, a man on a wire goes for a stroll a quarter of a mile above the sidewalks of Manhattan, and U.S. embassies in Africa are targeted in a terrorist attack, all on this day.
United States Congress
1964: The U.S. Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving US President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on American forces. The resolution was in response to a sea battle between the North Vietnamese Navy's Torpedo Squadron 135 and the destroyer USS Maddox on August 2.
