TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS THURSDAY, JULY 21, the 202nd day of 2022. There are 163 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 1925, the so-called Monkey Trial ended in Dayton, Tennessee, with John T. Scopes found guilty of violating state law for teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. (The conviction was later overturned on a technicality.) In 1861, during the Civil War, the first Battle of Bull Run was fought at Manassas, Virginia, resulting in a Confederate victory. In 1944, American forces landed on Guam during World War II, capturing it from the Japanese some three weeks later. In 1954, the Geneva Conference concluded with accords dividing Vietnam into northern and southern entities. In 1972, the Irish Republican Army carried out 22 bombings in Belfast, Northern Ireland, killing nine people and injuring 130 in what became known as “Bloody Friday.” In 1999, Navy divers found and recovered the bodies of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette in the wreckage of Kennedy’s plane in the Atlantic Ocean off Martha’s Vineyard.
In 2008, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, one of the world’s top war crimes fugitives, was arrested in a Belgrade suburb by Serbian security forces. (He was sentenced by a U.N. court in 2019 to life imprisonment after being convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.) In 2009, prosecutors in Cambridge, Massachusetts, dropped a disorderly conduct charge against prominent Black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was arrested by a white officer at his home near Harvard University after a report of a break-in. In 2011, the 30-year-old space shuttle program ended as Atlantis landed at Cape Canaveral, Florida, after the 135th shuttle flight. In 2016, the NBA moved the 2017 AllStar Game out of Charlotte because of its objections to a North Carolina law that limited anti-discrimination protections for lesbian, gay and transgender people. TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Singer Yusuf Islam (also known as Cat Stevens) and cartoonist Garry Trudeau are 74. Comedian Jon Lovitz is 65. Retired soccer player Brandi Chastain is 54. Former MLB All-Star pitcher CC Sabathia is 42. Actors Rory Culkin and Jamie Waylett (“Harry Potter” films) are 33.