TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS SUNDAY, JULY 19, the 201st day of 2020. There are 165 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:
On this date in 1993, President Bill Clinton announced a policy allowing homosexuals to serve in the military under a compromise dubbed “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue.”
In 1812, during the War of 1812, the First Battle of Sackets Harbor in Lake Ontario resulted in an American victory as U.S. naval forces repelled a British attack.
In 1943, Allied air forces raided Rome during World War II, the same day Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met in Feltre in northern Italy.
In 1944, the Democratic national convention convened in Chicago with the nomination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt considered a certainty.
In 1961, TWA became the first airline to begin showing regularly scheduled in-flight movies as it presented “By Love Possessed” to first-class passengers on a flight from New York to Los Angeles.
In 1969, Apollo 11 and its astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins, went into orbit around the moon.
In 1985, Christa McAuliffe of New Hampshire was chosen to be the first schoolteacher to ride aboard the space shuttle.
In 1990, baseball’s all-time hits leader, Pete Rose, was sentenced in Cincinnati to five months in prison for tax evasion.
In 2006, prosecutors reported that Chicago police beat, kicked, shocked or otherwise tortured scores of Black suspects from the 1970s to the early 1990s to try to extract confessions from them.
In 2014, a New York City police officer (Daniel Pantaleo) involved in the arrest of Eric Garner, who died in custody two days earlier after being placed in an apparent chokehold, was stripped of his gun and badge, and placed on desk duty. (Pantaleo was fired in August 2019.)
In 2016, Republicans meeting in Cleveland nominated Donald Trump as their presidential standard-bearer; in brief videotaped remarks, Trump thanked the delegates, saying: “This is a movement, but we have to go all the way.”
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actress Helen Gallagher and country singer Sue Thompson are 94. Singer Vikki Carr and blues singer-musician Little Freddie King are 80. Country singermusician Commander Cody is 76. Rock singer-musician Alan Gorrie (Average White Band) and International Tennis Hall-of-Famer Ilie Nastase are 74. Rock musicians Brian May and Bernie Leadon are 73. Movie director Abel Ferrara is 69. Actor Peter Barton is 64. Rock musician Kevin Haskins (Love and Rockets; Bauhaus) is 60. Actor Campbell Scott is
59. Actor Anthony Edwards is 58. Actress Clea Lewis and percussionist Evelyn Glennie are 55. Country musician Jeremy Patterson is 50. Rock musician Jason McGerr (Death Cab for Cutie) is 46. Actor Benedict Cumberbatch is 44. Actress Erin Cummings is 43. TV chef Marcela Valladolid is 42. Actor Jared Padalecki is
38. Actor Trai Byers is 37. Actress Kaitlin Doubleday (“Nashville”) is 36. Actor/ comedian Dustin Ybarra is 34. Actor Steven Anthony Lawrence is 30.