TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Sunday, July 24, the 205th day of 2022. There are 160 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On July 24, 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.
On this date:
In 1847, Mormon leader Brigham Young and his followers arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley in present-day Utah.
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 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 1959, during a visit to Moscow, Vice President Richard Nixon engaged in his famous “Kitchen Debate” with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
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 1975, an Apollo spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific, completing a mission which included the first-ever docking with a Soyuz capsule from the Soviet Union.
In 1998, the motion picture “Saving Private Ryan,” starring Tom Hanks and directed by Steven Spielberg, was released.
In 2010, a stampede inside a tunnel crowded with techno music fans left 21 people dead and more than 500 injured at the famed Love Parade festival in western Germany.
In 2016, Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Ten years ago: In his first foreign policy speech since emerging as the likely Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney called for an independent investigation into claims the White House had leaked national security information for President Barack Obama’s political gain; the White House replied that the president “has made abundantly clear that he has no tolerance for leaks.” Actor Chad Everett died in Los Angeles at age 75. Actor Sherman Hemsley died in El Paso, Texas, at age 74.
Five years ago: President Donald Trump gave a speech to a national Boy Scout gathering in West Virginia; Trump’s son-inlaw and adviser Jared Kushner answered questions from Senate investigators. A Taliban suicide bomber killed 24 people in an early morning assault in a neighborhood of the Afghan capital where prominent politicians lived.
One year ago: Jackie Mason, a rabbi-turned-comedian who took his sharp wit and piercing social commentary to Catskills nightclubs, West Coast talk shows and Broadway stages, died at 93.