TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Thursday, July 23, the 205th day of 2020. There are 161 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On July 23, 1829, William Austin Burt received a patent for his “typographer,” a forerunner of the typewriter.
On this date:
■ In 1885, Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, died in Mount McGregor, New York, at age 63.
■ In 1914, Austria-Hungary presented a list of demands to Serbia following the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serb assassin; Serbia’s refusal to agree to the entire ultimatum led to the outbreak of World War I.
■ In 1948, American pioneer filmmaker D.W. Griffith died in Los Angeles at age 73.
■ In 1967, five days of deadly rioting erupted in Detroit as an early morning police raid on an unlicensed bar resulted in a confrontation with local residents that escalated into violence that spread into other parts of the city; 43 people, mostly Blacks, were killed.
■ In 1982, actor Vic Morrow and two child actors, 7-year-old Myca Dinh Le and 6-year-old Renee Shin-Yi Chen, were killed when a helicopter crashed on top of them during filming of a Vietnam War scene for “Twilight Zone: The Movie.” (Director John Landis and four associates were later acquitted of manslaughter charges.)
■ In 1983, an Air Canada Boeing 767 ran out of fuel while flying from Montreal to Edmonton; the pilots were able to glide the jetliner to a safe emergency landing in Gimli, Manitoba. (The near-disaster occurred because the fuel had been erroneously measured in pounds instead of kilograms at a time when Canada was converting to the metric system.)
■ In 1997, the search for Andrew Cunanan (koo-NAN’-an), the suspected killer of designer Gianni Versace (JAH’nee vur-SAH’-chee) and others, ended as police found his body on a houseboat in Miami Beach, an apparent suicide.
■ In 1999, space shuttle Columbia blasted off with the world’s most powerful X-ray telescope and Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a U.S. space flight.
■ In 2003, a new audiotape purported to be from toppled dictator Saddam Hussein called on Iraqis to resist the U.S. occupation. Massachusetts’ attorney general issued a report saying clergy members and others in the Boston Archdiocese probably had sexually abused more than 1,000 people over a period of six decades.
■ In 2006, Tiger Woods became the first player since Tom Watson in 198283 to win consecutive British Open titles.
■ In 2011, singer Amy Winehouse, 27, was found dead in her London home from accidental alcohol poisoning.
■ In 2017, a tractor trailer was found in a Walmart parking lot in San Antonio, Texas, crammed with dozens of immigrants; ten died and many more were treated at a hospital for dehydration and heat stroke. (The driver, James Bradley Jr., was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to transporting the immigrants resulting in death.)