TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS THURSDAY, JULY 25, the 206th day of 2019. There are 159 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 1960, a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina, that had been the scene of a sit-in protest against its whites-only lunch counter dropped its segregation policy.
In 1866, Ulysses S. Grant was named General of the Army of the United States, the first officer to hold the rank.
In 1946, the United States detonated an atomic bomb near Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in the first underwater test of the device.
In 1952, Puerto Rico became a selfgoverning commonwealth of the United States.
In 1956, the Italian liner SS Andrea Doria collided with the Swedish passenger ship Stockholm off the New England coast late at night and began sinking; 51 people — 46 from the Andrea Doria, five from the Stockholm — were killed. (The Andrea Doria capsized and sank the following morning.)
In 1972, the notorious Tuskegee syphilis experiment came to light as the Associated Press reported that, for the previous four decades, the U.S. Public Health Service, in conjunction with the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, had been allowing poor, rural black male patients with syphilis to go without treatment, even allowing them to die, as a way of studying the disease.
In 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the first “test tube baby,” was born in Oldham, England; she’d been conceived through the technique of in-vitro fertilization.
In 1984, Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space as she carried out more than three hours of experiments outside the orbiting space station Salyut 7.
In 1985, a spokeswoman for Rock Hudson confirmed that the actor, hospitalized in Paris, was suffering from AIDS. (Hudson died in October 1985.)
In 1986, movie director Vincente Minnelli, known for such musicals as “Gigi,” ‘’An American in Paris” and “Meet Me in St. Louis,” died in Los Angeles at age 83.
In 1994, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan’s King Hussein signed a declaration at the White House ending their countries’ 46-year-old formal state of war.
In 2000, a New York-bound Air France Concorde crashed outside Paris shortly after takeoff, killing all 109 people on board and four people on the ground; it was the first crash of the supersonic jet.
In 2002, Zacarias Moussaoui declared he was guilty of conspiracy in the September 11 attacks, then dramatically withdrew his plea at his arraignment in Alexandria, Virginia.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Folk-pop singermusician Bruce Woodley (The Seekers) is 77. Rock musician Jim McCarty (The Yardbirds) is 76. Rock musician Verdine White (Earth, Wind & Fire) is 68. Singermusician Jem Finer (The Pogues) and model-actress Iman are 64. Cartoonist Ray Billingsley (“Curtis”) is 62. Rock musician Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) is 61. Celebrity chef/TV personality Geoffrey Zakarian is 60. Actress-singer Bobbie Eakes and actress Katherine Kelly Lang are 58. Actress Illeana Douglas and country singer Marty Brown are 54. Actor Matt LeBlanc and actress Wendy Raquel Robinson are 52. Rock musician Paavo Lotjonen (Apocalyptica) is 51. Actor D.B. Woodside is 50. Actress Miriam Shor is 48. Actor David Denman is 46. Actor Jay R. Ferguson is 45. Actor James Lafferty and actress Shantel VanSanten are 34. Actor Michael Welch is 32. Actress Linsey Godfrey is 31. Classical singer Faryl Smith is 24. Actor Mason Cook is 19. Actress Meg Donnelly (TV: “American Housewife”) is 18. Actor Pierce Gagnon is 14.