Today in history

On July 21, 1515, priest and mystic Philip Neri was born in Florence, Italy; the Catholic Church would canonize him in 1622.

In 1796 Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet, died in Dumfries, Scotland; he was 37.

In 1816, Paul Julius Reuter, founder of the British news agency bearing his name, was born in Hesse, Germany.

In 1831 Belgium became independent as Leopold I was proclaimed king of the Belgians.

In 1861 the first Battle of Bull Run was fought at Manassas, Va., resulting in a Confederate victory.

In 1899 author Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Ill.

In 1925 the so-called Monkey Trial that pitted Clarence Darrow, left, against William Jennings Bryan, right, ended in Dayton, Tenn., with John Scopes convicted of violating state law for teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. (The conviction was later overturned.)

In 1944 American forces landed on Guam during World War II.

In 1949 the U.S. Senate ratified the North Atlantic Treaty.

In 1954 the Geneva Accords divided Vietnam into northern and southern entities.

In 1955, during the Geneva summit, President Dwight Eisenhower presented his “open skies” proposal under which the U.S. and the Soviet Union would trade information on each other’s military facilities.

In 1961 Capt. Virgil “Gus” Grissom became the second American to rocket into a suborbital pattern around the Earth, flying aboard the Liberty Bell 7.

In 1969 Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin blasted off from the moon aboard the lunar module.

AP FILE