Today is Friday, July 9, the 190th day of 2021.
There are 175 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On July 9, 2004, a Senate Intelligence Committee report concluded the CIA had provided unfounded assessments of the threat posed by Iraq that the Bush administration had relied on to justify going to war.
On this date:
In 1540, England’s King Henry VIII had his 6-month-old marriage to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, annulled.
In 1776, the Declaration of Independence was read aloud to Gen. George Washington’s troops in New York.
In 1918, 101 people were killed in a train collision in Nashville, Tennessee. The Distinguished Service Cross was established by an Act of Congress.
In 1937, a fire at 20th Century Fox’s film storage facility in Little Ferry, New Jersey, destroyed most of the studio’s silent films.
In 1943, during World War II, the Allies launched Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily.
In 1944, during World War II, American forces secured Saipan as the last Japanese defenses fell.
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In 1947, the engagement of Britain’s Princess Elizabeth to Lt. Philip Mountbatten was announced.
In 1982, Pan Am Flight 759, a Boeing 727, crashed in Kenner, Louisiana, shortly after takeoff from New Orleans International Airport, killing all 145 people aboard and eight people on the ground.
In 1992, Democrat Bill Clinton tapped Tennessee Sen. Al Gore to be his running mate. Former CBS News commentator Eric Sevareid died in Washington at age 79.
In 1999, A jury in Los Angeles ordered General Motors Corp. to pay $4.9 billion to six people severely burned when their Chevrolet Malibu exploded in flames in a rear-end collision. (A judge later reduced the punitive damages to $1.09 billion, while letting stand $107 million in compensatory damages; GM settled the lawsuit in July 2003 for an undisclosed amount.)
In 2010, the largest U.S.-Russia spy swap since the Cold War was completed on a remote stretch of Vienna airport tarmac as planes from New York and Moscow arrived within minutes of each other with 10 Russian sleeper agents and four prisoners accused by Russia of spying for the West.
In 2015, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley relegated the Confederate flag to the state’s “relic room” after the legislature passed a measure removing the flag from the grounds of the Statehouse in the wake of the slaughter of nine African-Americans at a church Bible study.
