Today in History

Today is Thursday, July 24, the 205th day of 2014. There are 160 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon had to turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor.

On this date:

In 1783, Latin American revolutionary Simon Bolivar was born in Caracas, Venezuela.

In 1862, Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States, and the first to have been born a U.S. citizen, died at age 79 in Kinderhook, New York, the town where he was born in 1782.

In 1866, Tennessee became the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War.

In 1911, Yale University history professor Hiram Bingham III found the "Lost City of the Incas," Machu Picchu, in Peru.

In 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne, which settled the boundaries of modern Turkey, was concluded in Switzerland.

In 1937, the state of Alabama dropped charges against four of the nine young black men accused of raping two white women in the "Scottsboro Case."

In 1952, President Harry S. Truman announced a settlement in a 53-day steel strike.

In 1959, during a visit to Moscow, Vice President Richard Nixon engaged in his famous "Kitchen Debate" with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

In 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts -- two of whom had been the first men to set foot on the moon -- splashed down safely in the Pacific.

In 1987, Hulda Crooks, a 91-year-old mountaineer from California, became the oldest woman to conquer Mount Fuji, Japan's highest peak.

In 1998, a gunman burst into the U.S. Capitol, killing two police officers before being shot and captured. (The shooter, Russell Eugene Weston Jr., is being held in a federal mental facility.)

In 2002, nine coal miners became trapped in a flooded tunnel of the Quecreek Mine in western Pennsylvania; the story ended happily 77 hours later with the rescue of all nine.

Ten years ago: Without promising what specific steps he would take, President George W. Bush said in his weekly radio address that his administration was committed to relying on the recommendations of the September 11 commission in waging the war on terrorism. Former Nixon administration official Fred LaRue, who served a prison term for Watergate, died in Biloxi, Mississippi, at age 75.

Five years ago: Trying to tamp down a national uproar over race, President Barack Obama acknowledged using unfortunate words in declaring that Cambridge, Massachusetts, police had "acted stupidly" in arresting black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., adding he'd invited the Harvard professor and Sgt. James Crowley, the arresting officer, for "a beer here in the White House."

One year ago: The House narrowly rejected, 217-205, a challenge to the National Security Agency's secret collection of hundreds of millions of Americans' phone records. A high-speed train crash outside Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain killed 79 people. Pope Francis made an emotional plea in Aparecida, Brazil, for Roman Catholics to shun materialism in the first public Mass of his initial international trip as pontiff. It was announced by Kensington Palace that the newborn son of Prince William and Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, would be named George Alexander Louis. Virginia Johnson, half of the renowned Masters and Johnson team of sex researchers, died in St. Louis at age 88.

Today's Birthdays: Actor John Aniston is 81. Political cartoonist Pat Oliphant is 79. Comedian Ruth Buzzi is 78. Actor Mark Goddard is 78. Actor Dan Hedaya is 74. Actor Chris Sarandon is 72. Comedian Gallagher is 68. Actor Robert Hays is 67. Former Republican national chairman Marc Racicot is 66. Actor Michael Richards is 65. Actress Lynda Carter is 63. Movie director Gus Van Sant is 62. Country singer Pam Tillis is 57. Actor Paul Ben-Victor is 52. Actor Kadeem Hardison is 49. Actress-singer Kristin Chenoweth is 46. Actress Laura Leighton is 46. Actor John P. Navin Jr. is 46. Actress-singer Jennifer Lopez is 45. Basketball player-turned-actor Rick Fox is 45. Actor Eric Szmanda is 39. Actress Rose Byrne is 35. Country singer Jerrod Niemann is 35. Actress Summer Glau is 33. Actress Elisabeth Moss is 32. Actress Anna Paquin is 32. Actress Megan Park is 28. Actress Mara Wilson is 27. Rock singer Jay McGuiness (The Wanted) is 24. Actress Emily Bett Rickards (TV: Arrow") is 23. TV personality Bindi Irwin is 16.

Thought for Today: "Everything has two sides -- the outside that is ridiculous, and the inside that is solemn." -- Olive Schreiner, South African author and feminist (1855-1920).

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