TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Friday, July 27, the 208th day of 2018. 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 1789, President George Washington signed a measure establishing the Department of Foreign Affairs, forerunner of the Department of State.

■ 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, Va., for one hour and 12 minutes.

■ In 1921, Canadian researcher Frederick Banting and his assistant, Charles Best, succeeded in isolating the hormone insulin at the University of Toronto.

■ 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 1981, 6-year-old Adam Walsh was abducted from a department store in Hollywood, Fla., and was later murdered. (His father, John Walsh, became a well-known crime victims’ advocate.)

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

Ten years ago: A gunman went on a rampage at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, killing two people and wounding six others. (Jim D. Adkisson later pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.)

One year ago: The Boy Scouts’ chief executive apologized to those offended by the aggressive political rhetoric in President Donald Trump’s recent speech to the Scouts’ national jamboree. As stock in Amazon hit an all-time high, CEO Jeff Bezos briefly became the world’s richest man; Microsoft founder Bill Gates reclaimed the lead by afternoon as Amazon stock fell nearly 1 percent for the day.

Thought for Today: “We usually know what we can do, but temptation shows us who we are.”—Thomas a Kempis, German theologian (13801471).