Today in History: July 21, guilty verdict in “Monkey Trial”

Today in History Today is Thursday, July 21, the 202nd day of 2022. There are 163 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On July 21, 1925, the so-called ‘œMonkey Trial’� ended in Dayton, Tennessee, with John T. Scopes found guilty of violating state law for teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. (The conviction was later overturned on a technicality.) On this date: In 1861, during the Civil War, the first Battle of Bull Run was fought at Manassas, Virginia, resulting in a Confederate victory. In 1944, American forces landed on Guam during World War II, capturing it from the Japanese some three weeks later. In 1954, the Geneva Conference concluded with accords dividing Vietnam into northern and southern entities. In 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘œBuzz’� Aldrin blasted off from the moon aboard the ascent stage of the lunar module for docking with the command module. In 1972, the Irish Republican Army carried out 22 bombings in Belfast, Northern Ireland, killing nine people and injuring 130 in what became known as ‘œBloody Friday.’� In 1998, astronaut Alan Shepard died in Monterey, California, at age 74; actor Robert Young died in Westlake Village, California, at age 91. In 1999, Navy divers found and recovered the bodies of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette (bih-SEHT’), in the wreckage of Kennedy’s plane in the Atlantic Ocean off Martha’s Vineyard. In 2002, Ernie Els won the British Open in the first sudden-death finish in the 142-year history of the tournament. In 2008, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic (RA’-doh-van KA’-ra-jich), one of the world’s top war crimes fugitives, was arrested in a Belgrade suburb by Serbian security forces. (He was sentenced by a U.N. court in 2019 to life imprisonment after being convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.) In 2009, prosecutors in Cambridge, Massachusetts, dropped a disorderly conduct charge against prominent Black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was arrested by a white officer at his home near Harvard University after a report of a break-in. In 2011, the 30-year-old space shuttle program ended as Atlantis landed at Cape Canaveral, Florida, after the 135th shuttle flight. In 2016, Donald Trump accepted the GOP presidential nomination with a speech in which he pledged to cheering Republicans and still-skeptical voters that as president, he would restore the safety they feared they were losing, strictly curb immigration and save the nation from what he said was Hillary Clinton’s record of ‘œdeath, destruction, terrorism and weakness.’� The NBA moved the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte because of its objections to a North Carolina law that limited anti-discrimination protections for lesbian, gay and transgender people. Ten years ago: The president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge (zhahk ROH’-geh), rejected the latest calls for a minute of silence for the Israeli victims of the 1972 Munich massacre at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. Staff Sgt. Luis Walker, an Air Force training instructor at Lackland Air Force base in San Antonio, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for crimes that included rape and sexual assault. (Walker died in August 2014.)