July 21, 2024
QUOTE
When I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon I cried
--Alan Shepard
BIRTHDAYS
1898 – Sara Carter, singer-songwriter
1899 – Ernest Hemingway, novelist, short story writer, and journalist, Nobel Prize laureate
1924 – Don Knotts, Actor and screenwriter
1948 – Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam), English singer-songwriter and guitarist
1951 – Robin Williams, Actor and comedian
1957 – Jon Lovitz, comedian, actor, and producer
IN MEMORY
1796 – Robert Burns, Scottish poet and songwriter
1878 – Sam Bass, American outlaw
1998 – Alan Shepard, Admiral, pilot, and astronaut
1998 – Robert Young, Actor and singer
IN ON THIS DAY
1861 – The First Battle of Bull Run: At Manassas Junction, Virginia, the first major battle of the war begins and ends in a victory for the Confederate army.
1865 – In the market square of Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok shoots and kills Davis Tutt in what is regarded as the first western showdown.
1873 – At Adair, Iowa, Jesse James and the James–Younger Gang pull off the first successful train robbery in the American Old West.
1925 – In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John T. Scopes is found guilty of teaching human evolution in class and fined $100.
1944 – Claus von Stauffenberg and four fellow conspirators are executed for the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
1969 – At 02:56 UTC, astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to walk on the Moon, followed 19 minutes later by Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin.
1983 – The world’s lowest temperature in an inhabited location is recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica at −128.6 °F.