Today in History

Today is Thursday, July 24, the 206th day of 2008. There are 160 days left in the year.

On this date:

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

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

In 1858, Republican senatorial candidate Abraham Lincoln formally challenged Democrat Stephen A. Douglas to a series of political debates; the result was seven face-to-face encounters.

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 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 1948, Henry A. Wallace accepted the presidential nomination of the Progressive Party in Philadelphia.

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

In 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle stirred controversy during a visit to Montreal, Canada, when he declared, "Vive le Quebec libre!" (Long live free Quebec!)

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

Ten years ago: A gunman burst into the U.S. Capitol, opening fire and killing two police officers before being shot and captured. (The accused shooter, Russell Eugene Weston Jr., is being held in a federal mental facility.) The motion picture "Saving Private Ryan," starring Tom Hanks and directed by Steven Spielberg, was released.

Five years ago: The House and Senate intelligence committees issued their final report on the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, citing countless blunders, oversights and miscalculations that prevented authorities from stopping the attackers.

One year ago: President Bush, speaking at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina, sought to justify the Iraq war by citing intelligence reports he said showed a link between al-Qaida's operation in Iraq and the terror group that attacked the United States on Sept. 11. A grand jury in New Orleans refused to indict Dr. Anna Pou, who was accused of murdering four seriously ill hospital patients with drug injections during the desperate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, sentenced to life in prison in Libya for allegedly infecting children with HIV, were released after 8½ years behind bars. The U.S. minimum wage rose 70 cents to $5.85 an hour, the first increase in a decade.

Thought for Today: "History, n. An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools." - From "The Cynic's Word Book" by Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?).