This day in history

[July 24, 2010]  (AP)  Today is Saturday, July 24, the 205th day of 2010. There are 160 days left in the year.

Today's highlight in history:

On July 24th, 1959, during a visit to Moscow, Vice President Richard Nixon engaged in his famous "Kitchen Debate" with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

On this date:

In 1783, Latin American revolutionary Simon Bolivar (see-MOHN' boh-LEE'-vahr) was born in Caracas.

In 1847, Mormon leader Brigham Young and his followers arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley in present-day Utah.

In 1862, the eighth president of the United States, Martin Van Buren, died in Kinderhook, N.Y.

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

In 1929, President Herbert Hoover proclaimed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy.

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

In 1975, an Apollo spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific, completing a mission which included the first-ever docking with a Soyuz capsule from the Soviet Union.

In 1980, comedian-actor Peter Sellers died in London at 54.

Ten years ago: President Bill Clinton continued to mediate the Camp David Mideast summit. Michael Stone, a pro-British paramilitary member, was freed from prison as part of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord after serving 11 years of a life sentence for murder. (Stone received a 16-year sentence in 2008 for attempting to kill Catholic politicians in a televised one-man attack on the Northern Ireland legislature.) Georgia's Democratic former governor Zell Miller was appointed to the late Republican Paul Coverdell's Senate seat.

Five years ago: Lance Armstrong won his seventh consecutive Tour de France. Sir Richard Doll, the British scientist who first established a link between smoking and lung cancer, died in Oxford, England, at age 92.

One year ago: Trying to tamp down a national uproar over race, President Barack Obama acknowledged using unfortunate words in declaring that Cambridge, Mass., 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."

Today's birthdays: Movie director Peter Yates is 81. Actress Jacqueline Brookes is 80. Actor John Aniston (TV: "Days of Our Lives") is 77. Political cartoonist Pat Oliphant is 75. Comedian Ruth Buzzi is 74. Actor Mark Goddard is 74. Actor Dan Hedaya is 70. Actor Chris Sarandon is 68. Comedian Gallagher is 64. Actor Robert Hays is 63. Former Republican national chairman Marc Racicot (RAWS'-koh) is 62. Actor Michael Richards is 61. Actress Lynda Carter is 59. Movie director Gus Van Sant is 58. Country singer Pam Tillis is 53. Actor Paul Ben-Victor is 48. Actor Kadeem Hardison is 45. Actress-singer Kristin Chenoweth is 42. Actress Laura Leighton is 42. Actor John P. Navin Jr. is 42. Actress-singer Jennifer Lopez is 41. Basketball player-turned-actor Rick Fox is 41. Actor Eric Szmanda is 35. Actress Rose Byrne is 31. Actress Summer Glau is 29. Actress Elisabeth Moss is 28. Actress Anna Paquin is 28. Actress Mara Wilson is 23. TV personality Bindi Irwin is 12.

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)

[Associated Press]

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