TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Monday, July 27, the 209th day of 2020. There are 157 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight

in History: On July 27, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted 27-11 to adopt the first of three articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon, charging he had personally engaged in a course of conduct designed to obstruct justice in the Watergate case.

On this date:

In 1794, French revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre was overthrown and placed under arrest; he was executed the following day.

In 1866, Cyrus W. Field finished laying out the first successful underwater telegraph cable between North America and Europe (a previous cable in 1858 burned out after only a few weeks' use).

In 1909, during the first official test of the U.S. Army's first airplane, Orville Wright flew himself and a passenger, Lt. Frank Lahm, above Fort Myer, Virginia, for one hour and 12 minutes.

In 1919, race-related rioting erupted in Chicago; the violence, which claimed the lives of 23 Blacks and 15 whites, lasted until Aug. 3.

In 1946, American author, poet and publisher Gertrude Stein, 72, died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.

In 1953, the Korean War armistice was signed at Panmunjom, ending three years of fighting.

In 1960, Vice President Richard M. Nixon was nominated for president on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in Chicago.

In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to assess the causes of urban rioting, the same day Black militant H. Rap Brown told a press conference in Washington that violence was "as American as cherry pie."

In 1976, Air Force veteran Ray Brennan became the first person to die of so-called "Legionnaire's Disease" following an American Legion convention in Philadelphia.

In 1996, terror struck the Atlanta Olympics as a pipe bomb exploded at Centennial Olympic Park, directly killing one person and injuring 111. (Antigovernment extremist Eric Rudolph later pleaded guilty to the bombing, exonerating security guard Richard Jewell, who had been wrongly suspected.)

In 2003, comedian Bob Hope died in Toluca Lake, Calif. at age 100. Lance Armstrong won a recordtying fifth straight title in the Tour de France. (However, Amstrong was stripped of all seven of his Tour de France titles in 2012 by the U.S. AntiDoping Agency.)