Wednesday, August 2, 2000

There were 30- to 40-foot high flames. I thought my uniform was going to melt. Firefighter Robert Cisneros, on battling a blaze in California's Sierra Nevada that destroyed seven homes. Some 50 fires have charred at least 663,500 acres in 10 Western states in the past two weeks.

• A hearing is scheduled in U.S. District Court in Waco, Texas, on whether federal agents shot at Branch Davidians at the end of the 1993 standoff.
• IIt is the 10th anniversary of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
• The Maine Lobster Festival opens in Rockland.

• On Thursday, August 3, Superior Court Judge Andrew Smithson is to rule in Trenton, New Jersey, on defense motions to dismiss attempted murder charges against two New Jersey state troopers in the New Jersey Turnpike shooting case.
• On Friday, August 4, Britain's Queen Mother Elizabeth celebrates her 100th birthday.
• On Saturday, August 5, the National Association of Police Organizations holds its seventh annual Top Cops Awards ceremony in Washington.
• On Sunday, August 6, the 55th anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, is reached.

• In 1776, members of the Continental Congress began signing the Declaration of Independence.
• In 1876, in Deadwood, South Dakota, frontiersman "Wild Bill" Hickok was shot and killed while playing poker at a saloon.
• In 1934, German President Paul von Hindenburg died, clearing the way for Adolf Hitler to take over.
• In 1939, Albert Einstein urged U.S. President Roosevelt to create an atomic weapons research program.
• In 1943, U.S Navy patrol torpedo boat PT-109, commanded by Lt. John F. Kennedy, sank after it was cut in two by a Japanese destroyer off the Solomon Islands.
• In 1945, Soviet leader Josef Stalin, U.S. President Truman, and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee concluded the Potsdam conference.
• In 1964, the first of two attacks on U.S. destroyers by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin was reported by the Pentagon.
• In 1985, a Delta Air Lines jetliner crashed at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, killing 137 people.
• In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait.
• In 1999, a new long-range missile was test-fired by China.