Today in history
On July 27, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted 27-11 to adopt the first of three articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon, charging he had personally engaged in a course of conduct designed to obstruct justice in the Watergate case.
In 1794, French revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre was overthrown and placed under arrest; he was executed the following day.
In 1866, Cyrus W. Field finished laying out the first successful underwater telegraph cable between North America and Europe (a previous cable in 1858 burned out after only a few weeks’ use).
In 1909, during the first official test of the U.S. Army’s first airplane, Orville Wright flew himself and a passenger, Lt. Frank Lahm, above Fort Myer, Virginia, for one hour and 12 minutes.
In 1919, race-related rioting erupted in Chicago; the violence, which claimed the lives of 23 Blacks and 15 whites, lasted until Aug. 3.
In 1946, American author, poet and publisher Gertrude Stein, 72, died in Neuilly-surSeine (NU’-yee-suhr-sehn), France.
In 1953, the Korean War armistice was signed at Panmunjom, ending three years of fighting.
In 1960, Vice President Richard M. Nixon was nominated for president on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in Chicago.
In 1967, President Lyndon B.
Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to assess the causes of urban rioting, the same day Black militant H. Rap Brown told a press conference in Washington that violence was “as American as cherry pie.”
In 1976, Air Force veteran Ray Brennan became the first person to die of so-called “Legionnaire’s Disease” following an American Legion convention in Philadelphia.
In 1980, on day 267 of the Iranian hostage crisis, the deposed Shah of Iran died at a military hospital outside Cairo, Egypt, at age 60.
In 1996, terror struck the Atlanta Olympics as a pipe bomb exploded at Centennial Olympic Park, directly killing one person and injuring 111. (Anti-government extremist Eric Rudolph later pleaded guilty to the bombing, exonerating security guard Richard Jewell, who had been wrongly suspected.)
In 2003, comedian Bob Hope died in Toluca Lake, Calif. at age 100. Lance Armstrong won a record-tying fifth straight title in the Tour de France. (However, Amstrong was stripped of all seven of his Tour de France titles in 2012 by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.)
Ten years ago: BP announced that its much-criticized chief executive, Tony Hayward, would be replaced by Robert Dudley as the company reported a record quarterly loss and set aside $32.2 billion to cover the costs of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Canadian character actor Maury Chaykin died in Toronto on his 61st birthday.
Five years ago: President Barack Obama, during a visit to Ethiopia, unleashed a blistering and belittling rebuke of Republican White House hopefuls, calling their attack on his landmark nuclear deal with Iran “ridiculous if it weren’t so sad.” The Boy Scouts of America ended its blanket ban on gay adult leaders while allowing church-sponsored Scout units to maintain the exclusion for religious reasons.
One year ago: President Donald Trump described the Baltimore-area congressional district represented by one of his chief Democratic critics, Elijah Cummings, as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.” Russian police cracked down fiercely on demonstrators in central Moscow, beating some and arresting more than 1,000 who were protesting the exclusion of opposition candidates on the ballot for Moscow city council.