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• Today is Saturday, Aug. 3, the 215th day of 2013. There are 150 days left in the year.
• Today's Highlight in History:
• On August 3, 1863, the first thoroughbred horse races took place at the Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
• On this date:
• In 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, on a voyage that took him to the present-day Americas.
• In 1807, former Vice President Aaron Burr went on trial before a federal court in Richmond, Va., charged with treason. (He was acquitted less than a month later.)
• In 1914, Germany declared war on France at the onset of World War I.
• In 1936, Jesse Owens of the United States won the first of his four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics as he took the 100-meter sprint.
• In 1943, Gen. George S. Patton slapped a private at an army hospital in Sicily, accusing him of cowardice. (Patton was later ordered by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to apologize for this and a second, similar episode.)
• In 1949, the National Basketball Association was formed as a merger of the Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League.
• In 1958, the nuclear-powered submarine USS Nautilus became the first vessel to cross the North Pole underwater.
• In 1966, comedian Lenny Bruce, 40, was found dead in his Los Angeles home.
• In 1972, the U.S. Senate ratified the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. (The U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the treaty in 2002.)
• In 1981, U.S. air traffic controllers went on strike, despite a warning from President Ronald Reagan they would be fired, which they were.
• In 1988, the Soviet Union released Mathias Rust (muh-TEE'-uhs rust), the young West German pilot who had landed a light plane near Moscow's Red Square in May 1987.
• In 1993, the Senate voted 96-3 to confirm U.S. Supreme Court nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
• Ten years ago: The Episcopal Church's House of Deputies further paved the (Continued on page 27)
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