Today is Tuesday, July 23, the 204th day of 2019. There are 161 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On July 23, 1999, space shuttle Columbia blasted off with the world's most powerful X-ray telescope and Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a U.S. space flight.
On this date:
In 1829, William Austin Burt received a patent for his "typographer," a forerunner of the typewriter.
In 1885, Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, died in Mount McGregor, New York, at age 63.
In 1914, Austria-Hungary presented a list of demands to Serbia following the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serb assassin; Serbia's refusal to agree to the entire ultimatum led to the outbreak of World War I.
In 1962, the first public TV transmissions over Telstar 1 took place during a special program featuring live shots beamed from the United States to Europe, and vice versa.
In 1967, five days of deadly rioting erupted in Detroit as an early morning police raid on an unlicensed bar resulted in a confrontation with local residents that escalated into violence that spread into other parts of the city; 43 people, mostly blacks, were killed.
In 1983, an Air Canada Boeing 767 ran out of fuel while flying from Montreal to Edmonton; the pilots were able to glide the jetliner to a safe emergency landing in Gimli, Manitoba. (The near-disaster occurred because the fuel had been erroneously measured in pounds instead of kilograms at a time when Canada was converting to the metric system.)
In 1996, at the Atlanta Olympics, Kerri Strug made a heroic final vault despite torn ligaments in her left ankle as the U.S. women gymnasts clinched their first-ever Olympic team gold medal.
In 1997, the search for Andrew Cunanan, the suspected killer of designer Gianni Versace (JAH'-nee vur-SAH'-chee) and others, ended as police found his body on a houseboat in Miami Beach, an apparent suicide.
In 2001, Pope John Paul II urged President George W. Bush in their first meeting, held at Castel Gandolfo, Italy, to bar creation of human embryos for medical research.
In 2003, a new audiotape purported to be from toppled dictator Saddam Hussein called on Iraqis to resist the U.S. occupation. Massachusetts' attorney general issued a report saying clergy members and others in the Boston Archdiocese probably had sexually abused more than 1,000 people over a period of six decades.
In 2011, singer Amy Winehouse, 27, was found dead in her London home from accidental alcohol poisoning.
In 2017, a tractor trailer was found in a Walmart parking lot in San Antonio, Texas, crammed with dozens of immigrants; ten died and many more were treated at a hospital for dehydration and heat stroke. (The driver, James Bradley Jr., was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to transporting the immigrants resulting in death.) President Donald Trump tweeted that he has "complete power" to issue pardons. Jordan Spieth (speeth) won the British Open for his third career major championship.
