July 8, 2020
Day 190 of 366

 

July 8th is the 190th day of the year. It is Air Force and Air Defense Forces Day in Ukraine.

 

In the United States, today is “celebrated” as National Freezer Pop Day and National Chocolate with Almonds Day.

 

Historical items of note:

• In 1776, church bells (and possibly the Liberty Bell) were rung after John Nixon delivered the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence of the United States.
• In 1831, John Pemberton, the chemist and pharmacist who invented Coca-Cola, was born.
• In 1889, the first issue of The Wall Street Journal was published.
• In 1932, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its lowest level of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22.
• In 1947, reports were broadcast that a UFO crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico. This would become known as the Roswell UFO incident.
• In 1948, the United States Air Force accepted its first female recruits into a program called Women in the Air Force (WAF).
• In 1951, actress and director Anjelica Houston was born.
• In 1958, actor and musician Kevin Bacon was born. Everyone’s connected to him somehow.
• In 1959, actor Robert Knepper was born. He’s been in everything.
• In 1970, Richard Nixon delivered a special congressional message enunciating Native American self-determination as official United States Indian policy, leading to the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975.
• In 2010, Inception premiered.

 

In 2011, the Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched in STS-135, the final mission of the United States Space Shuttle program.

The mission’s primary cargo was the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) Raffaello and a Lightweight Multi-Purpose Carrier (LMC), which were delivered to the International Space Station (ISS). The flight of Raffaello marked the only time that Atlantis carried an MPLM. The four-person crew, consisting of Christopher Ferguson, Douglas G. Hurley, Sandra Magnus, and Rex J. Walheim, was the smallest of any shuttle mission since STS-6 in April 1983.

The shuttle returned to Earth on July 21, 2011, marking the end of the Space Shuttle program.

 

The Thing About Today is an effort to look at each day of 2020 with respect to its historical context.

For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.