Today is Friday, July 24, the 205th day of 2009. There are 160 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History
On July 24, 1959, during a visit to Moscow, Vice President Richard Nixon engaged in his famous “Kitchen Debate” with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. (The impromptu exchanges occurred in the kitchen of a model home at the American National Exhibition, with each man arguing for his country’s technological advances.)
On this date:
In 1567, the Catholic Queen of Scotland, Mary Stuart, abdicated after the Protestant aristocracy rebelled. There was a conflict between the Protestant aristocracy and academics. The queen had married her cousin, but had him murdered so she could be with her protestant lover. At their marriage a few weeks later, the conflict escalated: she was forced to abdicate, but fled to England. Mary Stuart was executed in 1568.
In 1701, the French trader Antoine de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac, founds Detroit (originally “La Ville d’Etroit,” or “city of the strait”) to control the fur trade in the region.
In 1783, Latin American revolutionary Simon Bolivar was born in Caracas, Venezuela.
In 1783, Catherine II (the Great) of Russia and Erekle II of Kartalinia-Kakhetia (eastern Georgia) concluded the Treaty of Georgievsk.
In 1847, completing a treacherous thousand-mile exodus, an ill and exhausted Brigham Young and fellow members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints arrived in Utah’s Great Salt Lake Valley. The Mormon pioneers viewed their arrival as the founding of a Mormon homeland, hence Pioneer Day. The Mormons, as they were commonly known, left their settlement in Nauvoo, Illinois, and journeyed West seeking refuge from religious persecution. The final impetus for their trek was the murder of founder and prophet Joseph Smith on June 27, 1844.
July 24 is still celebrated as Pioneer Day in Utah and several other Western states. The bravery of the original settlers and their strength of character and physical endurance is commemorated with festivities including games and music, speeches, parades, rodeos, and picnics.
In 1858, Republican senatorial candidate Abraham Lincoln formally challenged Democrat Stephen A. Douglas to a series of political debates; the result was seven face-to-face encounters.
In 1862, the eighth president of the United States, Martin Van Buren, died in Kinderhook, N.Y.
In 1866, in an early step in Reconstruction, the process of rebuilding the United States after the Civil War, Tennessee becomes the first Confederate state readmitted to the Union after the war.
In 1911, Hiram Bingham discovered Machu Picchu in a remote part of the Peruvian Andes.
In 1917, Dutch-born dancer and courtesan Mata Hari, whose name became a synonym for the seductive female spy, went on trial this day in 1917, accused of spying for Germany, and was subsequently found guilty and shot by a firing squad.
In 1920, Bella Abzug, the American feminist, lawyer and politician, was born.
In 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne, which settled the boundaries of modern Turkey, was concluded in Switzerland.
In 1929, President Herbert Hoover proclaimed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy.
In 1937, the state of Alabama dropped charges against four of the nine young black men accused of raping two white women in the “Scottsboro Case.”
In 1944, Soviet forces liberated the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp on the outskirts of the city of Lublin, Poland.
In 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.
In 1974, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon had to turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor.
In 1975, an Apollo spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific, completing a mission which included the first-ever docking with a Soyuz capsule from the Soviet Union.
In 1979, a Miami jury convicted Ted Bundy of first-degree murder in the slayings of two Florida State University sorority sisters.
In 1990, Iraq massed tens of thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks along its border with Kuwait.
In 1997, retired Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan died at age 91.
In 1998, a gunman opened fire in the U.S. Capitol, killing two police officers before being shot and captured.
In 1999, ten years ago, President Bill Clinton attacked the Republicans’ $792 billion tax-cut plan in fundraising speeches and his weekly radio address, saying it would “imperil the future stability of the country.” House Majority Leader Dick Armey replied that the GOP plan would help fix an unfair tax system.
In 2002, the U.S. House expelled Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, who had been convicted of bribery, racketeering and tax evasion.
In 2004, five years ago, without promising what specific steps he would take, President George W. Bush said in his weekly radio address that his administration was committed to relying on the recommendations of the September 11th commission in waging the war on terrorism.
In 2004, former Nixon administration official Fred LaRue, who served a prison term for Watergate, died in Biloxi, Miss., at age 75.
In 2005, Lance Armstrong won a seventh consecutive Tour de France.
In 2008, one year ago, Ford Motor Co. posted the worst quarterly performance in its history, losing $8.67 billion.
In 2008, cheered by an enormous crowd in Berlin, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama summoned Europeans and Americans together to “defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it” as surely as they had conquered communism a generation ago.
In 2008, Zvonko Busic, who had served 32 years in a U.S. prison for hijacking a TWA jetliner and planting a bomb that killed a policeman, was paroled and returned home to Croatia.
Today’s Birthdays
Movie director Peter Yates is 80. Actress Jacqueline Brookes is 79. Actor John Aniston (TV: “Days of Our Lives”) is 76. Political cartoonist Pat Oliphant is 74. Comedian Ruth Buzzi is 73. Actor Mark Goddard is 73. Actor Dan Hedaya is 69. Actor Chris Sarandon is 67. Comedian Gallagher is 63. Actor Robert Hays is 62. Former Republican national chairman Marc Racicot is 61. Actor Michael Richards is 60. Actress Lynda Carter is 58. Movie director Gus Van Sant is 57. Country singer Pam Tillis is 52. Actor Paul Ben-Victor is 47. Actor Kadeem Hardison is 44. Actress-singer Kristin Chenoweth is 41. Actress Laura Leighton is 41. Actor John P. Navin Jr. is 41. Actress-singer Jennifer Lopez is 40. Former NBA player-turned-actor Rick Fox is 40. Actor Eric Szmanda is 34. Actress Rose Byrne is 30. Actress Summer Glau is 28. Actress Elisabeth Moss is 27. Actress Anna Paquin is 27. Actress Mara Wilson is 22. TV personality Bindi Irwin is 11.
Today’s Historic Birthdays
Benedetto Marcello
7/24/1686 – 7/24/1739
Italian composer, writer and poet
Simon Bolivar
7/24/1783 – 12/17/1830
South American soldier and statesman
Alexandre Dumas
7/24/1802 – 12/5/1870
French author and dramatist; wrote “The Three Musketeers”
Alexander Davis
7/24/1803 – 1/14/1892
American architect, designer and illustrator
William Gillette
7/24/1853 – 4/29/1937
American playwright and actor; portrayed Sherlock Holmes
Ernest Bloch (1880-1959), Swiss-American composer, known for his works on Jewish themes and, in American music, for his influence as a teacher.
Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886-1965), Japanese novelist. Tanizaki’s fiction is mainly concerned with the conflict between modern ideas of love and beauty and traditional values. His first short stories, among them “The Tattooer” (1910), show the influences of the French symbolists and the American short-story writer Edgar Allan Poe. Some Prefer Nettles (1929; trans. 1955), considered one of his best novels, juxtaposes an unhappy marital relationship against changing cultural values in Japan. The novel The Makioka Sisters (1943-48; trans. 1957) also concerns the encroachment of modern life on traditional values. His fiction written after World War II, for example, Diary of a Mad Old Man (1961-62; trans. 1965), marks a return to the erotic element of his earlier work. Tanizaki also wrote an influential manual of literary style (1934).
Robert Graves
7/24/1895 – 12/7/1985
English poet, novelist, critic and classical scholar
Amelia Earhart
7/24/1897 – 7/2/1937
American aviator; the first woman to fly alone over the Atlantic
James Rhyne Killian
7/24/1904 – 1/29/1988
American president of M.I.T. (1948-59); helped create NASA
Cootie Williams
7/24/c 1908 – 9/15/1985
American jazz musician
John D. MacDonald
7/24/1916 – 12/28/1986
American mystery and science fiction writer
Bella Abzug
7/24/1920 – 3/31/1998
American politician, lawyer and activist
Thought for Today
“I never liked the middle ground — the most boring place in the world.” — Louise Nevelson, Russian-American artist (1900-1988).
Reflection for the day
We think, in our youth, we are the center of the universe, but we simply respond, go this way or that by accident, survive or improve by the luck of the draw, with little choice or determination on our part. (Michael Ondaatje)
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Full article: http://www.boston.com/news/history/articles/2009/07/24/today_in_history___july_24/
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2009/07/24/reflection_for_the_day/
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20090724.html
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/today.html
http://www.todayinhistory.de/index.php?tag=24&monat=7&dayisset=1&year=2009&lang=en
