Today is Sunday, July 19, the 200th day of 2026. There are 165 days left in the year.
Today in History:
On July 19, 2006, prosecutors reported that Chicago police beat, kicked, shocked or otherwise tortured scores of Black suspects from the 1970s to the early 1990s to try to extract confessions from them.
Also on this date:
In 1812, during the War of 1812, the First Battle of Sackets Harbor in Lake Ontario resulted in an American victory as U.S. naval forces repelled a British attack.
In 1848, the first “Convention to discuss the social, civil and religious condition and rights of Woman” convened at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, N.Y.
In 1969, Apollo 11 and its astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins, went into orbit around the moon.
In 1975, the Apollo and Soyuz space capsules that were linked in orbit for two days separated.
In 1979, the Nicaraguan capital of Managua fell to Sandinista guerrillas two days after President Anastasio Somoza fled the country.
In 1980, the Moscow Summer Olympics began, minus dozens of nations that boycotted the games because of Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan.
In 1989, 111 people were killed when United Airlines Flight 232, a DC-10 that sustained a tail engine failure and the loss of hydraulic systems, crashed while making an emergency landing at Sioux City, Iowa; 185 other people survived.
In 1990, baseball’s all-time hits leader, Pete Rose, was sentenced in Cincinnati to five months in prison for tax evasion.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton announced a policy allowing gays to serve in the military under a compromise dubbed “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue.”
In 2005, President George W. Bush announced his choice of federal appeals court judge John G. Roberts Jr. to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. (Roberts ended up succeeding Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who died in September 2005; Samuel Alito followed O’Connor.)
In 2013, in a rare and public reflection on race, President Barack Obama called on the nation to do some soul searching over the death of Black teenager Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his shooter, George Zimmerman, saying Martin “could have been me 35 years ago.”
In 2018, a duckboat packed with tourists capsized and sank in high winds on a lake in the tourist town of Branson, Missouri, killing 17 people.
In 2021, Paul Allard Hodgkins, a Florida man who breached the U.S. Senate chamber on Jan. 6, 2021, received an eight-month prison term in the first resolution of a felony case arising from the U.S. Capitol insurrection. (In 2025, President Donald Trump pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or vowed to dismiss the cases of all 1,500-plus people charged with crimes in the riot.)
In 2022, Britain shattered its record for the highest temperature ever registered amid a heat wave that seared swaths of Europe; the Met Office weather agency registered a reading of 40.3 degrees Celsius (104.5 degrees Fahrenheit) at Coningsby in eastern England.
Today’s Birthdays: Civil rights activist and educator Rachel Robinson, widow of baseball’s Jackie Robinson, is 104. Blues singer-musician Little Freddie King is 86. Singer-musician Alan Gorrie (Average White Band) is 80. International Tennis Hall of Famer Ilie Nastase is 80. Rock musician Brian May (Queen) is 79. Rock musician Bernie Leadon is 79. Movie director Abel Ferrara is 75. Movie director Atom Egoyan is 66. Actor Campbell Scott is 65. Actor Anthony Edwards is 64. Ukrainian politician and former boxing champion Vitali Klitschko is 55. Actor Benedict Cumberbatch is 50. TV chef Marcela Valladolid is 48. Actor Trai Byers (TV: “Empire”) is 43.
