Today in History, July 29, 1981: Prince Charles and Princess Diana wed

Today is July 29. On this date in:

1890

Artist Vincent van Gogh, 37, died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.

1914

Transcontinental telephone service in the U.S. became operational with the first test conversation between New York and San Francisco.

1921

Adolf Hitler became the leader (“fuehrer”) of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party).

1958

President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA.

1965

The Beatles’ second feature film, “Help!,” had its world premiere in London.

1967

An accidental rocket launch on the deck of the supercarrier USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin resulted in a fire and explosions that killed 134 servicemen. (Among the survivors was future Arizona senator John McCain, a U.S. Navy lieutenant commander who narrowly escaped with his life.)

1975

President Gerald R. Ford became the first U.S. president to visit the site of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland.

1980

A state funeral was held in Cairo, Egypt, for the deposed Shah of Iran, who had died two days earlier at age 60.

1981

Britain’s Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in a glittering ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

1994

Abortion opponent Paul Hill shot and killed Dr. John Bayard Britton and Britton’s bodyguard, James H. Barrett, outside the Ladies Center clinic in Pensacola, Fla.

2008

Army scientist Bruce E. Ivins, 62, named as a top suspect in anthrax mailing attacks in 2001, died at a hospital in Frederick, Md., after overdosing on Tylenol.