Today’s highlight in history
On July 25, 1975, the musical “A Chorus Line” opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre, beginning a run of 6,137 performances.
On this date
In 1866, Ulysses S. Grant was named General of the Army of the United States, the first officer to hold the rank.
In 1934, Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated by proNazi Austrians in a failed coup attempt.
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 self-governing 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 1967, a full-page ad in The Times (of London) called for the legalization of marijuana, saying the law against the drug was “immoral in principle and unworkable in practice”; among the signatories were all four of the Beatles, one of whom, Paul McCartney, paid for the ad.
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-ever crash of the supersonic jet.
Ten years ago: A presidential commission urged broad changes to veterans’ care that would boost benefits for family members helping the wounded, establish an easy-to-use website for medical records and overhaul the way disability pay was awarded.
Five years ago: NBC announced it had topped the $1 billion mark in advertising sales for the upcoming Olympic Games in London, topping the $850 million in ad sales for the Beijing games in 2008.
One year ago: The FBI said it was investigating how thousands of Democratic National Committee emails were hacked (Wikileaks had posted emails suggesting the DNC had favored Clinton over Sanders during the primary season).