Today in History – July 21
Today is the 202nd day of 2023. There are 163 days left in the year.
By the Associated Press
Today’s Highlight in History:
On July 21, 1925, the so-called “Monkey Trial” ended in Dayton, Tennessee, with John T. Scopes found guilty of violating state law for teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. The conviction was later overturned on a technicality. The Tennessee law forbidding the teaching of the Evolution Theory remained in place until repealed in 1967.
On this date:
In 1861, during the Civil War, the first Battle of Bull Run was fought at Manassas, Virginia, resulting in a Confederate victory.
In 1944, American forces landed on Guam during World War II, capturing it from the Japanese some three weeks later.
In 1954, the Geneva Conference concluded with accords dividing Vietnam into northern and southern entities.
In 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin blasted off from the moon aboard the ascent stage of the lunar module for docking with the command module.
In 1972, the Irish Republican Army carried out 22 bombings in Belfast, Northern Ireland, killing nine people and injuring 130 in what became known as “Bloody Friday.”
In 1998, astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American to travel to space, died in Monterey, California, at age 74.
In 1999, Navy divers found and recovered the bodies of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette (bih-SEHT’), in the wreckage of Kennedy’s plane in the Atlantic Ocean off Martha’s Vineyard.
In 2002, Ernie Els won the British Open in the first sudden-death finish in the 142-year history of the tournament.
In 2008, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic (RA’-doh-van KA’-ra-jich), one of the world’s top war crimes fugitives, was arrested in a Belgrade suburb by Serbian security forces. (He was sentenced by a U.N. court in 2019 to life imprisonment after being convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.)
In 2009, prosecutors in Cambridge, Massachusetts, dropped a disorderly conduct charge against prominent Black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was arrested by a white officer at his home near Harvard University after a report of a break- in.
In 2011, the 30-year-old space shuttle program ended as Atlantis landed at Cape Canaveral, Florida, after the 135th shuttle flight.
In 2016, Donald Trump accepted the GOP presidential nomination with a speech in which he pledged to cheering Republicans and still-skeptical voters that as president, he would restore the safety they feared they were losing, strictly curb immigration and save the nation from what he said was Hillary Clinton’s record of “death, destruction, terrorism and weakness.”
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