TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Tuesday, July 26, the 208th day of 2016. There are 158 days left in the year.

In 1775,

the Continental Congress established a Post Office and appointed Benjamin Franklin its Postmaster-General.

In 1788,

New York became the 11th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

In 1908,

U.S. Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte ordered creation of a force of special agents that was a forerunner of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In 1925,

five days after the end of the Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, prosecutor William Jennings Bryan died at age 65. (Although Bryan had won a conviction against John T. Scopes for teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, the verdict was later overturned.)

In 1945,

the Potsdam Declaration warned Imperial Japan to unconditionally surrender, or face “prompt and utter destruction.” The same day, Winston Churchill resigned as Britain’s prime minister after his Conservatives were soundly defeated by the Labour Party; Clement Attlee succeeded him.

In 1952,

Argentina’s first lady, Eva Peron, died in Buenos Aires at age 33. King Farouk I of Egypt abdicated in the wake of a coup led by Gamal Abdel Nasser.

In 1956,

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal.

In 1965,

the Maldives became independent of Britain.

In 1971,

Apollo 15 was launched from Cape Kennedy on America’s fourth successful manned mission to the moon.

In 1986,

Islamic radicals in Lebanon released the Rev. Lawrence Martin Jenco, an American hostage held for nearly 19 months. American statesman W. Averell Harriman died in Yorktown Heights, New York, at age 94.