TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS MONDAY, JULY 19, the 200th day of 2021. There are 165 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:
On this date in 1969, Apollo 11 and its astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins, went into orbit around the moon.
In 1848, a pioneering women’s rights convention convened in Seneca Falls, New York.
In 1943, Allied air forces raided Rome during World War II, the same day Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met in Feltre in northern Italy.
In 1961, TWA became the first airline to begin showing regularly scheduled inflight movies as it presented “By Love Possessed” to first-class passengers on a flight from New York to Los Angeles.
In 1975, the Apollo and Soyuz space capsules that were linked in orbit for two days separated.
In 1980, the Moscow Summer Olympics began, minus dozens of nations that were boycotting the games because of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan.
In 1989, 111 people were killed when United Air Lines Flight 232, a DC-10 which sustained the uncontained failure of its tail engine and the loss of hydraulic systems, crashed while making an emergency landing at Sioux City, Iowa; 185 other people survived.
In 1990, baseball’s all-time hits leader, Pete Rose, was sentenced in Cincinnati to five months in prison for tax evasion.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton announced a policy allowing homosexuals to serve in the military under a compromise dubbed “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue.”
In 2005, President George W. Bush announced his choice of federal appeals court judge John G. Roberts Jr. to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. (Roberts ended up succeeding Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who died in Sept. 2005; Samuel Alito followed O’Connor.)
In 2006, prosecutors reported that Chicago police beat, kicked, shocked or otherwise tortured scores of Black suspects from the 1970s to the early 1990s to try to extract confessions from them.
In 2007, “Mad Men,” a cable TV series about a New York advertising agency, premiered on AMC.
In 2014, a New York City police officer (Daniel Pantaleo) involved in the arrest of Eric Garner, who had died in custody two days earlier after being placed in an apparent chokehold, was stripped of his gun and badge, and placed on desk duty. (Pantaleo was fired in August 2019.) Actor James Garner, 86, died in Los Angeles.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actor Helen Gallagher and country singer Sue Thompson are 95. Singer Vikki Carr and Blues singer-musician Little Freddie King are 81. Country singer-musician Commander Cody is 77. Actor George Dzundza is 76. Rock singer-musician Alan Gorrie (Average White Band) and International Tennis Hall-of-Famer Ilie Nastase are 75. Rock musicians Brian May and Bernie Leadon are 74. Actor Beverly Archer is 73. Movie director Abel Ferrara is 70. Actor Peter Barton is 65. Rock musician Kevin Haskins (Love and Rockets; Bauhaus) and movie director Atom Egoyan are 61. Actor Campbell Scott is 60. Actor Anthony Edwards is 59. Actor Clea Lewis and percusssionist Evelyn Glennie are 56. Classical singer Urs Buhler (Il Divo) and actor Andrew Kavovit are 50. Rock musician Jason McGerr (Death Cab for Cutie) is 47. Actor Benedict Cumberbatch is 45. Actor Erin Cummings is 44. TV chef Marcela Valladolid is 43. Actor Chris Sullivan (“This is Us”) is 41. Actor Jared Padalecki is 39. Actor Trai Byers is 38. Actor Kaitlin Doubleday (“Nashville”) is 37. Actor/ comedian Dustin Ybarra is 35.