Today in History: July 22, First solo around-the-world flight
Today in History
Today is Monday, July 22, the 204th day of 2024. There are 162 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On July 22, 1933, Aviator Wiley Post landed at Floyd Bennett Field in New York City, completing the first solo flight around the world in 7 days, 18 hours and 49 minutes.
Also on this date:
In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln presented to his Cabinet a preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.
In 1934, bank robber John Dillinger was shot to death by federal agents outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater, where he had just seen the Clark Gable movie “Manhattan Melodrama.”
In 1937, the U.S. Senate rejected President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court.
In 1942, the Nazis began transporting Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka concentration camp.
In 1943, American forces led by Gen. George S. Patton captured Palermo, Sicily, during World War II.
In 1975, the House of Representatives joined the Senate in voting to restore the American citizenship of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
In 1991, police in Milwaukee arrested Jeffrey Dahmer, who later confessed to murdering 17 men and boys.
In 1992, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar escaped from his luxury prison near Medellin (meh-deh-YEEN’). (He was slain by security forces in December 1993.)
In 1999, the Woodstock ’99 four-day music festival began; the event would ultimately be marred by destruction and violence by concertgoers amid lax security and stifling heat.
In 2011, Anders Breivik (AHN’-durs BRAY’-vihk), a self-described “militant nationalist,” massacred 69 people at a Norwegian island youth retreat after detonating a bomb in nearby Oslo that killed eight others in the nation’s worst violence since World War II.
In 2015, a federal grand jury indictment charged Dylann Roof, the young man accused of killing nine Black church members in Charleston, South Carolina, with 33 counts including hate crimes that made him eligible for the death penalty. (Roof would become the first person sentenced to death for a federal hate crime; he is on death row at a federal prison in Indiana.)
In 2022, Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, was convicted of contempt charges for defying a congressional subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. (Bannon is currently serving his four-month sentence in federal prison.)
Today’s Birthdays: Author Tom Robbins is 92. Actor Terence Stamp is 86. Singer George Clinton is 83. Actor-singer Bobby Sherman is 81. Former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, is 81. Movie writer-director Paul Schrader is 78. Actor Danny Glover is 78. Singer Mireille Mathieu is 78. Actor-comedian-director Albert Brooks is 77. Rock singer Don Henley is 77. Author S.E. Hinton is 76. Film composer Alan Menken is 75. Jazz musician Al Di Meola (mee-OH’-lah) is 70. Actor Willem Dafoe is 69. Actor John Leguizamo is 64. R&B singer Keith Sweat is 63. Folk singer Emily Saliers (Indigo Girls) is 61. Actor-comedian David Spade is 60. Actor Rhys Ifans (rees EYE’-fanz) is 57. Actor/singer Jaime Camil is 51. Singer Rufus Wainwright is 51. Actor Franka Potente (poh-TEN’-tay) is 50. Actor Selena Gomez is 32. NFL running back Ezekiel Elliott is 29. Britain’s Prince George of Wales is 11.