Today in History
Today’s highlight:
On July 21, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin blasted off from the moon aboard the ascent stage of the lunar module for docking with the command module.
On this date:
1925: The so-called “Monkey Trial” ended in Dayton, Tennessee, with John T. Scopes found guilty of violating state law for teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. The conviction was later overturned on a technicality.
1955: During a summit in Geneva, President Dwight D. Eisenhower presented his “open skies” proposal under which the U.S. and the Soviet Union would trade information on each other’s military facilities and allow aerial reconnaissance. The
Soviets rejected the proposal.
1980: Draft registration began in the United States for 19- and 20-year-old men.
1990: A benefit concert took place in Germany at the site of the fallen Berlin Wall; the concert, which drew some 200,000 people, was headlined by Roger Waters,a founder of Pink Floyd. The concert ended with the collapse of a mock Berlin Wall made of styrofoam.
1994: Britain’s Labor Party elected Tony Blair its new leader, succeeding the late John Smith.
1999: Navy divers found and recovered the bodies of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette, in the wreckage of Kennedy’s plane in the Atlantic Ocean off Martha’s Vineyard.
2000: Special Counsel John C. Danforth concluded “with 100 percent certainty” that the federal government was innocent of wrongdoing in the siege that killed 80 members of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, in 1993.
2011: The 30-year-old space shuttle program ended as Atlantis landed at Cape Canaveral, Florida, after the 135th shuttle flight.
2008: Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, one of the world’s top war crimes fugitives, was arrested in a Belgrade suburb by Serbian security forces. He was sentenced by a U.N. court in 2019 to life imprisonment after being convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
2017: White House press secretary Sean Spicer abruptly quit over President Donald Trump’s decision to name financier Anthony Scaramucci as the new White House communications director. Scaramucci announced from the White House briefing room that Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who had been Spicer’s deputy, would take over for Spicer.
Ten years ago: The Senate voted to terminate further production of the Air Force’s topline F-22 fighter jets.
Five years ago: President Barack Obama ordered employment protection for gay and transgender employees who worked for the federal government or for companies holding federal contracts, telling advocates at a White House signing ceremony he embraced the “irrefutable rightness of your cause.”
One year ago: Reacting to the disclosure that his former lawyer had secretly taped their discussion about a potential payment for a former Playboy model, President Donald Trump called such taping “totally unheard of & perhaps illegal,” but added that he “did nothing wrong.”