TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS FRIDAY, JULY 21, 2017

On this day in history: 1831 - Belgium became independent as Leopold I was proclaimed King of the Belgians.

1858 - Adelaide and Melbourne are linked by the first intercolonial electric telegraph line.

1940 - Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia were annexed by the Soviet Union.

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

1954 - The Geneva Conference partitioned Vietnam into North Vietnam and South Vietnam.

1957 - Althea Gibson became the first black woman to win a major US tennis title when she won the Women’s National clay-court singles competition.

1959 - A U. District Court judge in New York City ruled that Lady Chatterley’s Lover was not a dirty book.

1961 - Captain Virgil “Gus” Grissom became the second American to rocket into a sub-orbital pattern around the Earth. He was flying on the Liberty Bell 7.

1968 - Arnold Palmer became the first golfer to make a million dollars in career earnings after he tied for second place at the PGA Championship.

1969 - The CSIRO Observatory in Parkes, Australia, transmits the first pictures of the Apollo 11 Moon walk to the world.

1987 - Mary Hart, of Entertainment Tonight” had her legs insured by Lloyd’s of London for $2 million. 1998 - Chinese gymnast Sang Lan, 17, was paralysed after a fall while practising for the women’s vault competition at the Goodwill Games in New York. Spinal surgery 4 days later failed to restore sensation below her upper chest.

2007 - The seventh and last book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released.

2011 - Space Shuttle Atlantis landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was the last flight of NASA’s space shuttle program.