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 1789, President George Washington signed a measure establishing the Department of Foreign Affairs, forerunner of the Department of State.
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 1940, Billboard magazine published its first “music popularity chart” listing best-selling retail records (in first place was “I’ll Never Smile Again” recorded by Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, with featured vocalist Frank Sinatra).
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 2012, Britain opened its Olympic Games in a celebration of Old England and new, even cheekily featuring a stunt double for Queen Elizabeth II parachuting with James Bond into Olympic Stadium.
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.
In 2017, new White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, in an interview published by The New Yorker, attacked chief of staff Reince Priebus and other White House officials in sometimes profane terms. (A day later, President Donald Trump announced that Priebus was being replaced by John Kelly. Scaramucci himself was ousted on July 31.)
In 2020, 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.
In 2021, American gymnast Simone Biles pulled out of the gymnastics team competition at the Tokyo Olympics to focus on her mental well-being, saying she realized following a shaky vault that she wasn’t in the right headspace to compete; she was the latest high-profile athlete to discuss mental health struggles. Seventeen-year-old Lydia Jacoby of Alaska won the women’s 100-meter breaststroke, upsetting American teammate and defending champion Lilly King. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that even vaccinated people return to wearing masks indoors in parts of the U.S. where the delta variant of the coronavirus was fueling infection surges. Robert Aaron Long, accused in eight killings at Atlanta-area massage businesses, pleaded guilty to murder in four of the deaths and was sentenced to life in prison. Actor Bob Odenkirk collapsed on the set of the TV drama “Better Call Saul” in New Mexico; he later announced that he’d had a small heart attack.
July 27: TV producer Norman Lear is 101. Actor John Pleshette (“Knots Landing”) is 81. Actor-director Betty Thomas (“Hill Street Blues”) is 76. Singer Maureen McGovern is 74. Actor Roxanne Hart (“The Good Girl,” ″Chicago Hope”) is 69. Guitarist Duncan Cameron (Sawyer Brown) is 67. Comedian Carol Leifer is 67. Comedian Bill Engvall is 66. Jazz singer Karrin Allyson is 61. Country singer Stacy Dean Campbell is 56. Singer Juliana Hatfield is 56. Actor Julian McMahon (“Fantastic Four” films, TV’s “Profiler”) is 55. Actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (“Game of Thrones”) is 53. Comedian Maya Rudolph is 51. Drummer Abe Cunningham of Deftones is 50. Singer Pete Yorn is 49. Actor Seamus Dever (“Castle”) is 47. Actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers (“The Tudors”) is 46. Comedian Heidi Gardner (“Saturday Night Live”) is 40. Actor Taylor Schilling (“Orange Is the New Black”) is 39. Singer Cheyenne Kimball of Gloriana is 33. Actor Alyvia Alyn Lind (“Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors”) is 16.