Today in History
Jul 26, 2021, 9:00 PM | Updated: 9:45 pm
Today in History
Today is Tuesday, July 27, the 208th day of 2021. There are 157 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On July 27, 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.)
On this date:
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 1921, Canadian researcher Frederick Banting and his assistant, Charles Best, succeeded in isolating the hormone insulin at the University of Toronto.
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 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 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 1981, 6-year-old Adam Walsh was abducted from a department store in Hollywood, Fla., and was later murdered. (His father, John Walsh, became a well-known crime victims’ advocate.)
In 1995, the Korean War Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington by President Bill Clinton and South Korean President Kim Young-sam.
In 2015, 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.
Ten years ago: A Russian space official (Vitaly Davydov) said that once the mammoth International Space Station was no longer needed, it would be sent into the Pacific Ocean. Ervin Santana pitched the first solo no-hitter for the Angels in nearly 27 years, striking out 10 and leading Los Angeles over Cleveland 3-1. Former New York Yankees pitcher Hideki Irabu, 42, was found dead of an apparent suicide in the affluent Los Angeles suburb of Rancho Palos Verdes.
Five years ago: President Barack Obama, addressing cheering delegates at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, implored Americans to elect Hillary Clinton to the White House, casting her as a candidate who believed in the optimism that drove the nation’s democracy and warning against the “deeply pessimistic vision” of Republican Donald Trump. More than a year after Freddie Gray, a Black man, suffered a broken neck in a Baltimore police van, the effort to hold six officers criminally responsible for his death collapsed when the city abruptly dropped all charges in the case.
One year ago: Congressional leaders from both parties praised the late civil rights icon and Democratic Rep. John Lewis as a moral force for the nation in a memorial service in the Capitol Rotunda. The world’s biggest COVID-19 vaccine study began with the first of 30,000 planned volunteers helping to test shots created by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc. The White House said President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, was self-isolating after becoming the highest-ranking official to test positive for the coronavirus. More than a dozen Miami Marlins players and staff tested positive for COVID-19 in an outbreak that stranded the team in Philadelphia, disrupting the major league baseball schedule on the fifth day of the pandemic-delayed season.
Today’s Birthdays: TV producer Norman Lear is 99. Actor John Pleshette is 79. Actor-director Betty Thomas is 74. Olympic gold medal figure skater Peggy Fleming is 73. Singer Maureen McGovern is 72. Rock musician Tris Imboden (formerly with Chicago) is 70. Actor Roxanne Hart is 67. Comedian-actor-writer Carol Leifer is 65. Comedian Bill Engvall is 64. Jazz singer Karrin Allyson is 59. Country singer Stacy Dean Campbell is 54. Rock singer Juliana Hatfield is 54. Actor Julian McMahon is 53. Actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (NIH’-koh-lye KAH’-stur WAHL’-dah) is 51. Comedian Maya Rudolph is 49. Rock musician Abe Cunningham is 48. Singer-songwriter Pete Yorn is 47. Former MLB All-Star Alex Rodriguez is 46. Actor Seamus Dever is 45. Actor Martha Madison is 44. Actor Jonathan Rhys (rees) Meyers is 44. Actor/comedian Heidi Gardner is 38. Actor Blair Redford is 38. Actor Taylor Schilling is 37. MLB All-Star pitcher Max Scherzer is 37. Singer Cheyenne Kimball is 31. Golfer Jordan Spieth (speeth) is 28. Actor Alyvia Alyn Lind is 14.
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