(Holmes was later convicted of murder and attempted murder, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.) After years of preparation and months of buildup, London’s Olympic moment finally arrived as Royal Marine Martyn Williams carried the Olympic torch from a Royal Navy Sea King helicopter into the Tower of London on the shore of the River Thames (tehmz). In 2012: Gunman James Holmes opened fire inside a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, during a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises,” killing 12 people and wounding 70 others. In 2010, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted almost totally along party lines, 13-6, to approve Elena Kagan to be the Supreme Court’s fourth female justice. Bush signed an executive order prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment, including humiliation or denigration of religious beliefs, in the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects. In 2006, the Senate voted 98-0 to renew the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act for another quarter-century. In 1993, White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster Jr., 48, was found shot to death in a park near Washington, D.C. Brennan, one of the court’s most liberal voices, announced he was stepping down. In 1990, Supreme Court Justice William J. Security Council voted to admit Vietnam to the world body. In 1977, a flash flood hit Johnstown, Pennsylvania, killing more than 80 people and causing $350 million worth of damage. In 1976, America’s Viking 1 robot spacecraft made a successful, first-ever landing on Mars. In 1951, Jordan’s King Abdullah I was assassinated in Jerusalem by a Palestinian gunman who was shot dead on the spot by security. Roosevelt was nominated for a fourth term of office at the Democratic convention in Chicago. In 1944, an attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb failed as the explosion only wounded the Nazi leader. In 1917, America’s World War I draft lottery began as Secretary of War Newton Baker, wearing a blindfold, reached into a glass bowl and pulled out a capsule containing the number 258 during a ceremony inside the Senate office building. Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC.On July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon after reaching the surface in their Apollo 11 lunar module. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin & Michael Collins Go Through Customs and Sign Immigration Form After the First Moon Landing (1969) The Source Code for the Apollo 11 Moon Landing Mission Is Now Free on Github Stanley Kubrick’s Daughter Vivian Debunks the Age-Old Moon Landing Conspiracy Theory Read more about this extraordinary event at NASA and Kottke. In a post-flight press conference, Armstrong called the successful mission “a beginning of a new age,” and it was, though his optimism would seem almost quaint when a couple decades later, the U.S. Armstrong and Aldrin walked around and collected samples for two hours, then returned safely to Earth. Armstrong, Aldrin, and Michael Collins landed on the moon. Just a little over eight years “since the flights of Gagarin and Shepard,” NASA writes, “followed quickly by President Kennedy’s challenge to put a man on the moon before the decade is out,” it happened. On July 20, 1969, the nation witnessed what could easily be called NASA’s greatest triumph, the Apollo 11 moon landing, which not only really happened, but was broadcast live on CBS, with commentary by Walter Cronkite and former astronaut Wally Schirra and live audio from Mission Control in Houston and Buzz Aldrin himself, “whose job during the landing,” Jason Kottke writes, “was to keep an eye on the LM (lunar module)’s altitude and speed.” The contrast with our parents’ indelible memories of a televised space broadcast from seventeen years earlier could not be starker. “It was NASA’s darkest tragedy,” writes Elizabeth Howell at, an accident that “changed the space program forever.” Like millions of other schoolkids at the time we had been glued to the live broadcast, and became witnesses to horror. The conversation took a decidedly downbeat turn when a nationally televised moment we all remembered all too well came up: the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. During a recent dinner a few friends and I found ourselves reminiscing about formative moments in our collective youth.
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