On August 18, 1587, Virginia Dare became the first child of English parents to be born in present-day America, on what is now Roanoke Island in North Carolina. (However, the Roanoke colony ended up mysteriously disappearing.)

Ten years ago

Cindy Sheehan, who’d started an anti-war demonstration near President George W. Bush’s Texas ranch nearly two weeks earlier, left the camp after learning her mother had suffered a stroke, but told supporters the protest would go on. A judge in Wichita, Kansas, sentenced BTK serial killer Dennis Rader to 10 consecutive life terms, the maximum the law would allow.

Five years ago

General Motors filed the first batch of paperwork to sell stock to the public again, a significant step toward shedding U.S. government ownership a year after the automaker had filed for bankruptcy.

One year ago

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon ordered the National Guard to Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis convulsed by protests over the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen. Former Vermont U.S. Sen. James Jeffords, who in 2001 tipped control of the Senate when he quit the Republican Party to become an independent, died in Washington; he was 80.

— By The Associated Press