Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is Aug. 10. A year-long wave of terror finally ended on this date in 1977 for residents of New York City. A 24-year-old postal employee, David Berkowitz, was arrested and charged with being the "Son of Sam," who had killed six young people and wounded seven others. Advertisement More terror, this time at a Los Angeles area Jewish Community Center in 1999, where a white supremacist gunman opened fire in the lobby, wounding three children and two adults. He then fled and killed a Filipino-American letter-carrier a few miles away. The gunman, Buford Furrow Jr., surrendered in Las Vegas the next day. He told authorities he was "concerned about the decline of the white race." It was on this date in 1990 that a jury in Washington, D.C., convicted Mayor Marion Barry on one misdemeanor cocaine possession charge and acquitted him on another. However, the jury deadlocked on the 12 other counts and a mistrial was declared. Barry would do some time and later revive his political career -- once again being elected mayor of Washington. A committee of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson suggested to the Continental Congress on this date in 1776 that the United States adopt "E pluribus unum" -- "Out of many, one" -- as the motto for its Great Seal. Advertisement For years, the United States owned and operated the Panama Canal, which cut thousands of miles off the voyages of ships traveling between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. But on this date in 1977, the U.S. and Panama reached an agreement in principle to transfer control of the canal to Panama by the year 2000. The handover took place on Dec. 31, 1999. We now return you to the present, already in progress.
