Today in history

Today is Saturday, July 23, the 204th day of 2022. There are 161 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On July 23, 1983, an Air Canada Boeing 767 ran out of fuel while flying from Montreal to Edmonton; the pilots were able to glide the jetliner to a safe emergency landing in Gimli, Manitoba. (The near-disaster occurred because the fuel had been erroneously measured in pounds instead of kilograms at a time when Canada was converting to the metric system.)

On this date:

In 1958, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II named the first four women to peerage in the House of Lords.

In 1967, five days of deadly rioting erupted in Detroit as an early morning police raid on an unlicensed bar resulted in a confrontation with local residents, escalating into violence that spread into other parts of the city; 43 people, mostly Blacks, were killed.

In 1982, actor Vic Morrow and two child actors, 7-year-old Myca Dinh Le and 6-year-old Renee ShinYi Chen, were killed when a helicopter crashed on top of them during filming of a Vietnam War scene for “Twilight Zone: The Movie.” (Director John Landis and four associates were later acquitted of manslaughter charges.)

In 1990, President George H.W. Bush announced his choice of Judge David Souter of New Hampshire to succeed the retiring Justice William J. Brennan on the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1996, at the Atlanta Olympics, Kerri Strug made a heroic final vault despite torn ligaments in her left ankle as the U.S. women gymnasts clinched their first-ever Olympic team gold medal.

In 1997, the search for Andrew Cunanan (kooNAN’-an), the suspected killer of designer Gianni Versace (JAH’-nee vurSAH’-chee) and others, ended as police found his body on a houseboat in Miami Beach, an apparent suicide.

In 1999, space shuttle Columbia blasted off with the world’s most powerful X-ray telescope and Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a U.S. space flight.