Sunday, July 24

This Day In History

• 1783   Revolutionary Simon Bolivar was born in Caracas, Venezuela.
• 1847   Mormon leader Brigham Young and his followers arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake in present-day Utah.
• 1862   Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States, died in Kinderhook, N.Y., a age 79.
• 1866   Tennessee became the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War.
• 1923   The Treaty of Lausanne, which settled the boundaries of modern Turkey, was concluded in Switzerland.
• 1929   President Herbert Hoover proclaimed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy.
• 1937   The state of Alabama dropped charges against five black men accused of raping two white women in the Scottsboro case.
• 1969   The Apollo 11 astronauts, two of whom had been the first men to set foot on the moon, splashed down safely in the Pacific.
• 1974   The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon had to turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor.
• 1990   Iraq massed tens of thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks along its border with Kuwait.
• 1997   Retired Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan died at age 91.
• 1998   A gunman opened fire in the U.S. Capitol, killing two police officers before being shot and captured.
• 2002   The House expelled Ohio Rep. James Traficant, who had been convicted of bribery, racketeering and tax evasion.
• 2002   Nine coal miners became trapped in a flooded mine in western Pennsylvania; they were rescued three days later.

Happy Birthday To

• 1783   Simon Bolivar (South American liberator; died Dec 17, 1830)
• 1802   Alexandre Dumas (La Pailleterie) (playwright, novelist: The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers; died Dec 5, 1870)
• 1898   Amelia Earhart (aviator: 1st woman to fly solo across the Atlantic; 1st woman to fly solo from Hawaii to California; disappeared July 2, 1937 near Howland Island in the Pacific during a round the world trip from Florida to California)
• 1920   Bella Abzug (Stavitsky)
• 1935   Pat Oliphant (political cartoonist)
• 1936   Ruth Buzzi (comedienne, actress: Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, The Entertainers, The Steve Allen Comedy Hour, That Girl, Sesame Street, Finders Keepers, Freaky Friday)
• 1951   Lynda Carter (actress: Wonder Woman)