TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Thursday, July 15, the 196th day of 2021. There are 169 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight
On July 15, 1834, the Spanish Inquisition was abolished more than 3 1/2 centuries after its creation.
On this date
In 1870, Georgia became the last Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union. Manitoba entered confederation as the fifth Canadian province.
In 1910, the term “Alzheimer’s disease” was used to describe a progressive form of presenile dementia in the book “Clinical Psychiatry” by German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, who credited the work of his colleague, Alois Alzheimer, in identifying the condition.
In 1913, Augustus Bacon, D-Ga., became the first person elected to the U.S. Senate under the terms of the recently ratified 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing for popular election of senators.
In 1916, Boeing Co., originally known as Pacific Aero Products Co., was founded in Seattle.
In 1918, the Second Battle of the Marne, resulting in an Allied victory, began during World War I.
In 1975, three American astronauts blasted off aboard an Apollo spaceship hours after two Soviet cosmonauts were launched aboard a Soyuz
spacecraft for a mission that included a linkup of the two ships in orbit.
In 1976, a 36-hour kidnap Actor Patrick Wayne is 82. ordeal began for 26 schoolchildren Singer Millie Jackson is 77. and their bus driver Singer Linda Ronstadt is 75. as they were abducted near Chowchilla by three gunmen and imprisoned in a buried truck. (The captives escaped unharmed; the kidnappers were caught.)
In 1985, a visibly gaunt Rock Hudson appeared at a news conference with frequent co-star Doris Day. (It was later revealed Hudson was suffering from AIDS.)
In 1997, fashion designer Gianni Versace, 50, was shot dead outside his Miami Beach home; suspected gunman Andrew Phillip Cunanan, 27, was found dead eight days later, a suicide. (Investigators believed Cunanan killed four other people before Versace in a cross-country rampage that began the previous March.)
In 2002, John Walker Lindh, an American who’d fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan, pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to two felonies in a deal sparing him life in prison.
In 2018, President Donald Trump arrived in Finland for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Earlier, in an interview with CBS News, Trump named the European
Union as a top adversary of
the United States.
Today’s birthdays
Musician Artimus Pyle is 73. Arianna Huffington is 71. Musician Marky Ramone is 69. Musician Joe Satriani is 65. Model Kim Alexis is 61. Actor Willie Aames is 61. Actordirector
Forest Whitaker is 60. Actor Lolita Davidovich is 60. Actor Brigitte Nielsen is 58. Musician Jason Bonham is 55. Actor Brian Austin Green is 48.