TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS TUESDAY, JULY 24, the 205th day of 2018. There are 160 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:
On this date in 1959, during a visit to Moscow, Vice President Richard Nixon engaged in his famous “Kitchen Debate” with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
In 1862, Martin Van Buren, eighth president of the United States and the first to have been born a U.S. citizen, died at age 79 in Kinderhook, N.Y., the town where he was born in 1782.
In 1866, Tennessee became the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War.
In 1915, the SS Eastland, a passenger ship carrying more than 2,500 people, rolled onto its side while docked on the Chicago River; an estimated 844 people died.
In 1937, the state of Alabama dropped charges against four of the nine young black men accused of raping two white women in the “Scottsboro Case.”
In 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts — two of whom had been the first men to set foot on the moon — splashed down safely in the Pacific.
In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon had to turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor.
In 1998, a gunman burst into the U.S. Capitol, killing two police officers before being shot and captured. (The shooter, Russell Eugene Weston Jr., is being held in a federal mental facility.)
In 2002, nine coal miners became trapped in a flooded tunnel of the Quecreek Mine in western Pennsylvania; they were rescued 77 hours later.
In 2005, Lance Armstrong won his seventh consecutive Tour de France. (His wins were stripped away after Armstrong’s 2013 confession to using steroids, and other banned performance-enhancing drugs and methods.)
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actor John Aniston is 85. Actor Dan Hedaya is 78. Actor Chris Sarandon is 76. Actor Michael Richards is 69. Actress Lynda Carter is 67. Movie director Gus Van Sant is 66. Actor Paul Ben-Victor is 56. Basketball Hall-of-Famer Karl Malone is 55. Retired MLB All-Star Barry Bonds is 54. Actress-singer Kristin Chenoweth is 50. Actress-singer Jennifer Lopez and basketball player-turned-actor Rick Fox are 49. Director Patty Jenkins (“Wonder Woman”) is 47. Actor Eric Szmanda is 43. Actress Rose Byrne is 39. Actress Anna Paquin is 36. Actress Mara Wilson is 31. Rock singer Jay McGuiness (The Wanted) is 28. TV personality Bindi Irwin is 20.