Today in history
Today is Saturday, July 23, the 205th day of 2016. There are 161 days left in the year.
On this date in the SCV: In 1936, The Signal reported that the Reseda girls team came over and, metaphorically speaking jumped all over the Newhall ladies team, beating them with a score of 31 to 9. The game was one-sided from the beginning. The Mezzio sisters, four of them, made up the “murderers row” in the visiting team and apparently ran the bases at will. It was suspicioned at times that the umpire was biased in the case, but they didn’t need his assistance to win even though they got it a time or two. It showed that the local team only needed to get together and practice to give any team a good account of themselves.
Today’s Highlight in History: On July 23, 1996, in one of the best remembered moments of the Atlanta Olympics, Kerri Strug made a heroic final vault despite torn ligaments in her sprained left ankle as the U.S. women gymnasts clinched their first-ever Olympic team gold medal. Ten years ago: Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was hospitalized on the 17th day of a hunger strike; he appeared thinner but healthy at his trial a few days later. American Floyd Landis won the Tour de France (however, he was later disqualified for doping). Tiger Woods became the first player since Tom Watson in 198283 to win consecutive British Open titles. Zuleyka Rivera Mendoza of Puerto Rico was crowned Miss Universe 2006 at the pageant in Los Angeles. Five years ago: Singer Amy Winehouse, 27, was found dead in her London home from accidental alcohol poisoning. Retired Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, the first foreignborn chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, died at Madigan Army Medical Center near Tacoma, Washington, at age 75. Nguyen Cao Ky, 80, the flamboyant former air force general who’d ruled South Vietnam for two years during the Vietnam war, died in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A bullet train crash in southern China claimed 40 lives.
One year ago: Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee it was “fantasy plain and simple” to claim that President Barack Obama had failed to insist on enough restraints on Iran’s nuclear program before agreeing to lift economic sanctions. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump paid a visit to the Mexico border, where he predicted Hispanics would love him, adding, “They already do.” A gunman opened fire in a Lafayette, Louisiana, theater during a screening of the film “Trainwreck,” killing two people and wounding nine before fatally shooting himself. On this date: In 1885, Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, died in Mount McGregor, New York, at age 63. In 1886, a legend — or myth — was born as Steve Brodie claimed to have made a daredevil plunge from the Brooklyn Bridge into New York’s East River. (However, there are doubts about whether the dive had actually taken place.)