Today in History

Today in History Today is Monday, July 19, the 200th day of 2021. There are 165 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On July 19, 1969, Apollo 11 and its astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Edwin ‘œBuzz’� Aldrin and Michael Collins, went into orbit around the moon. On this date: In 1848, a pioneering women’s rights convention convened in Seneca Falls, New York. In 1943, Allied air forces raided Rome during World War II, the same day Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met in Feltre in northern Italy. In 1961, TWA became the first airline to begin showing regularly scheduled in-flight movies as it presented ‘œBy Love Possessed’� to first-class passengers on a flight from New York to Los Angeles. In 1975, the Apollo and Soyuz space capsules that were linked in orbit for two days separated. In 1980, the Moscow Summer Olympics began, minus dozens of nations that were boycotting the games because of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. In 1989, 111 people were killed when United Air Lines Flight 232, a DC-10 which sustained the uncontained failure of its tail engine and the loss of hydraulic systems, crashed while making an emergency landing at Sioux City, Iowa; 185 other people survived. In 1990, baseball’s all-time hits leader, Pete Rose, was sentenced in Cincinnati to five months in prison for tax evasion. In 1993, President Bill Clinton announced a policy allowing homosexuals to serve in the military under a compromise dubbed ‘œdon’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue.’� In 2005, President George W. Bush announced his choice of federal appeals court judge John G. Roberts Jr. to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. (Roberts ended up succeeding Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who died in Sept. 2005; Samuel Alito followed O’Connor.) In 2006, prosecutors reported that Chicago police beat, kicked, shocked or otherwise tortured scores of Black suspects from the 1970s to the early 1990s to try to extract confessions from them. In 2007, ‘œMad Men,’� a cable TV series about a New York advertising agency, premiered on AMC. In 2014, a New York City police officer (Daniel Pantaleo) involved in the arrest of Eric Garner, who died in custody two days earlier after being placed in an apparent chokehold, was stripped of his gun and badge and placed on desk duty. (Pantaleo was fired in August 2019.) Actor James Garner, 86, died in Los Angeles. Ten years ago: Summoned by British lawmakers to answer for a phone hacking and bribery scandal at one of his tabloids, media mogul Rupert Murdoch told a parliamentary committee hearing he was humbled and ashamed, but accepted no responsibility for wrongdoing. Five years ago: Republicans meeting in Cleveland nominated Donald Trump as their presidential standard-bearer; in brief videotaped remarks, Trump thanked the delegates, saying: ‘œThis is a movement, but we have to go all the way.’� Writer-director Garry Marshall, 81, whose deft touch with comedy and romance led to a string of TV hits that included ‘œHappy Days’� and ‘œLaverne & Shirley’� and the box-office successes ‘œPretty Woman’� and ‘œRunaway Bride,’� died in Burbank, California.