HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Friday, July 21, the 202nd day of 2017. There are 163 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1944 – World War II: Claus von Stauffenberg and fellow conspirators are executed in Berlin, Germany, for the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. 1954 – First Indochina War: The Geneva Conference partitions Vietnam into North Vietnam and South Vietnam. 1959 – NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered cargopassenger ship, is launched as a showcase for Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” initiative. 1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to walk on the Moon (July 20 Eastern Time Zone). 1970 – After 11 years of construction, the Aswan High Dam in
Egypt is completed. 1972 – The Troubles: Bloody Friday: The Provisional IRA detonate 22 bombs in central Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom in the space of 80 minutes, killing nine and injuring 130. 1973 – In the Lillehammer affair in Norway, Israeli Mossad agents kill a waiter whom they mistakenly thought was involved in the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre. 1976 – Christopher Ewart-Biggs, the British ambassador to the Republic of Ireland, is assassinated by the Provisional IRA. 1977 – The start of the four-day-long Libyan–Egyptian War. 1983 – The world’s lowest temperature in an inhabited location is recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica at -89.2 °C (-128.6 °F). 1995 – Third Taiwan Strait Crisis: The People’s Liberation Army begins firing missiles into the waters north of Taiwan. 2001 – At the conclusion of a fireworks display on Okura Beach in Akashi, Hyogo, Japan, 11 people are killed and more than 120 are injured when a pedestrian footbridge connecting the beach to JR Asagiri Station becomes overcrowded and people leaving the event fall down in a domino effect. 2008 – Ram Baran Yadav is declared the first president of
Nepal. 2011 – NASA’s Space Shuttle program ends with the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-135 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. 2012 – Erden Eruç completes the first solo human-powered
circumnavigation of the world.