TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS FRIDAY, JULY 24, the 206th day of 2020. There are 160 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date 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 1847, Mormon leader Brigham Young and his followers arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley in present-day Utah.
In 1858, Republican senatorial candidate Abraham Lincoln formally challenged Democrat Stephen A. Douglas to a series of political debates; the result was seven face-to-face encounters.
In 1862, Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States, and the first to have been born a U.S. citizen, died at age 79 in Kinderhook, New York, 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 1911, Yale University history professor Hiram Bingham III found the “Lost City of the Incas,” Machu Picchu, in Peru.
In 1915, the SS Eastland, a passenger ship carrying more than 2,500 people, rolled onto its side while docked at the Clark Street Bridge on the Chicago River; an estimated 844 people died in the disaster.
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 1980, comedian-actor Peter Sellers died in London at 54.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actor John Aniston is 87. Political cartoonist Pat Oliphant is 85. Comedian Ruth Buzzi and actor Mark Goddard are 84. Actor Dan Hedaya is 80. Actor Chris Sarandon is 78. Comedian Gallagher is 74. Actress Lynda Carter is 69. Movie director Gus Van Sant is 68. Former Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., is 67. Country singer Pam Tillis is 63. Basketball Hall-of-Famer Karl Malone is 57. Retired MLB All-Star Barry Bonds is 56. Actress-singer Kristin Chenoweth, actress Laura Leighton and actor John P. Navin Jr. are 52. Actress-singer Jennifer Lopez and basketball player-turned-actor Rick Fox are 51. Director Patty Jenkins (“Wonder Woman”) is 49. Actress Jamie Denbo (TV: “Orange is the New Black”) is 47. Actor Eric Szmanda is 45. Actresses Elisabeth Moss and Anna Paquin are 38. Actress Sarah Greene is 36. Actress Megan Park is 34. Actress Mara Wilson is 33. Actress Sarah Steele is 32. Rock singer Jay McGuiness (The Wanted) is 30. TV personality Bindi Irwin is 22.