TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS SUNDAY, JULY 18, the 199th day of 2021. There are 166 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:
On this date in 1918, South African antiapartheid leader and President Nelson Mandela was born in the village of Mvezo.
In 1536, the English Parliament passed an act declaring the authority of the pope void in England.
In 1863, during the Civil War, Union troops spearheaded by the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, made up of Black soldiers, charged Confederate-held Fort Wagner on Morris Island, South Carolina. The Confederates repelled the Northerners, who suffered heavy losses; the 54th’s commander, Col. Robert Gould Shaw, was among those killed.
In 1964, nearly a week of rioting erupted in New York’s Harlem neighborhood after the fatal police shooting of a Black teenager, James Powell, two days earlier.
In 1969, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., left a party on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha’s Vineyard with Mary Jo Kopechne, 28; Kennedy’s car later went off a bridge into the water. Kennedy escaped, but Kopechne drowned.
In 1984, gunman James Huberty opened fire at a McDonald’s in San Ysidro,
California, killing 21 people before being shot dead by police. Walter F. Mondale won the Democratic presidential nomination in San Francisco.
In 2005, an unrepentant Eric Rudolph was sentenced in Birmingham, Alabama, to life in prison for an abortion clinic bombing that killed an off-duty police officer and maimed a nurse.
In 2013, Detroit, which was once the symbol of American industrial might, became the biggest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy, its finances ravaged and its neighborhoods hollowed out by a long, slow decline in population and auto manufacturing.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Skating champion and commentator Dick Button is 92. Olympic gold medal figure skater Tenley Albright is 86. Singer Martha Reeves is 80. Business mogul Richard Branson is 71. Actor Margo Martindale is 70. Singer Ricky Skaggs is 67. Actor Anne-Marie Johnson is 61. Actor Elizabeth McGovern is 60. Talk show host-actor Wendy Williams is 57. Actor Vin Diesel is 54. Actor Grant Bowler is 53. Retired NBA All-Star Penny Hardaway is 50. Dance music singer-songwriter M.I.A. and rock musician Daron Malakian (System of a Down; Scars on Broadway) are 46.