DAILY ALMANAC
Today is Wednesday, July 20, the 201st day of 2022. There are 164 days left in the year. On this date in:
1917: America’s World War I draft lottery began as Secretary of War Newton Baker, wearing a blindfold, reached into a glass bowl and pulled out a capsule containing the number 258 during a ceremony inside the Senate office building.
1944: An attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb failed as the explosion only wounded the Nazi leader. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated for a fourth term of office at the Democratic convention in Chicago.
1951: Jordan’s King Abdullah I was assassinated in Jerusalem by a Palestinian gunman who was shot dead on the spot by security.
1969: Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first people to walk on the moon after reaching the surface in their Apollo 11 lunar module.
1976: America’s Viking 1 robot spacecraft made a successful, first-ever landing on Mars.
1977: A flash flood hit Johnstown, Pennsylvania, killing more than 80 people and causing $350 million worth of damage. The U.N. Security Council voted to admit Vietnam to the world body.
1990: Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, one of the court’s most liberal voices, announced he was stepping down.
1993: White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster Jr., 48, was found shot to death in a park near Washington, D.C.; his death was ruled a suicide.
2006: The Senate voted 98-0 to renew the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act for another quarter-century.
2007: President George W. Bush signed an executive order prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment, including humiliation or denigration of religious beliefs, in the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects.
2010: The Senate Judiciary Committee voted almost totally along party lines, 13-6, to endorse the nomination of Elena Kagan to be the Supreme Court’s fourth female justice.
2013: Longtime White House correspondent Helen Thomas, 92, died in Washington.
2012: Gunman James Holmes opened fire inside a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, during a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises,” killing 12 people and wounding 70. (Holmes was convicted of murder and attempted murder, and sentenced to life in prison.)
Bassist John Lodge of the Moody Blues is 79. Country singer T.G. Sheppard is 78. Singer Kim Carnes is 77. Guitarist Carlos Santana is 75. Guitarist
Jay Jay French of Twisted Sister is 70. Drummer Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols is 66. Keyboardist Mick Mcneil of Simple Minds is 64. Country singer Radney Foster is 63. Actor Dean Winters (“30 Rock,” Mayhem in Allstate commercials) is 58. Guitarist
Stone Gossard of Pearl Jam is 56. Actor
Josh Holloway (“Lost”) is 53. Actor Sandra Oh is 51. Actor Omar Epps is 49. Actor Judy Greer is 47. Model Gisele Bundchen is 42. Dancer-country singer
Julianne Hough (“Dancing with the Stars”) is 34. Actor Billi Bruno (“According to Jim”) is 26.