Today in History • Monday, July 25, 2022

On this date:

In 1866, Ulysses S. Grant was named General of the Army of the United States, the first officer to hold the rank.

In 1943, Benito Mussolini was dismissed as premier of Italy by King Victor Emmanuel III, and placed under arrest. (However, Mussolini was later rescued by the Nazis, and re-asserted his authority.)

In 1946, the United States detonated an atomic bomb near Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in the first underwater test of the device.

In 1956, the Italian liner SS Andrea Doria collided with the Swedish passenger ship Stockholm off the New England coast late at night and began sinking; 51 people — 46 from the Andrea Doria, five from the Stockholm — were killed. (The Andrea Doria capsized and sank the following morning.)

In 1960, a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina, that had been the scene of a sit-in protest against its whites-only lunch counter dropped its segregation policy.

In 1972, the notorious Tuskegee syphilis experiment came to light as The Associated Press reported that for the previous four decades, the U.S. Public Health Service, in conjunction with the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, had been allowing poor, rural Black male patients with syphilis to go without treatment, even allowing them to die, as a way of studying the disease.

In 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the first “test tube baby,” was born in Oldham, England; she’d been conceived through the technique of in-vitro fertilization.

In 1994, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (YIT’-sahk rah-BEEN’) and Jordan’s King Hussein (hoo-SAYN’) signed a declaration at the White House ending their countries’ 46-year-old formal state of war.

In 2000, a New York-bound Air France Concorde crashed outside Paris shortly after takeoff, killing all 109 people on board and four people on the ground; it was the first-ever crash of the supersonic jet.

In 2016, on the opening night of the Democratic national convention in Philadelphia, Bernie Sanders robustly embraced his former rival Hillary Clinton as a champion for the same economic causes that enlivened his supporters, signaling it was time for them to rally behind her in the campaign against Republican Donald Trump.

In 2019, President Donald Trump had a second phone call with the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during which he solicited Zelenskyy’s help in gathering potentially damaging information about former Vice President Joe Biden; that night, a staff member at the White House Office of Management and Budget signed a document that officially put military aid for Ukraine on hold.

In 2020, federal agents fired tear gas to break up rowdy protests in Portland, Oregon, that continued into the early morning, demonstrations had been taking place in Portland every night for two months in the aftermath of the Minneapolis death of George Floyd.

Ten years ago: President Barack Obama embraced some degree of control on the sale of weapons but also told the National Urban League in New Orleans he would seek a national consensus on combating violence. NBC announced it had topped the $1 billion mark in advertising sales for the upcoming Olympic Games in London, topping the $850 million in ad sales for the Beijing games in 2008.

Five years ago: A bitterly-divided Senate voted to move forward with Republican legislation to repeal and replace “Obamacare.” Sen. John McCain, returning to the Capitol for the first time since he was diagnosed with brain cancer, cast a decisive “yes” vote. (Three days later, McCain joined with two other Republican senators and Democrats in defeating the repeal effort.) House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who was critically wounded in a shooting at a baseball practice on June 14, was released from a Washington hospital.

One year ago: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi named a second Republican critic of Donald Trump, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, to a special committee investigating the Capitol riot; he joined Rep. Liz Cheney as the committee’s two Republicans, both selected by Democrats. Golfers Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm, who’d won the past two U.S. Open golf tournaments, dropped out of the Tokyo Games after testing positive for COVID-19.

Today’s Birthdays: Folk-pop singer-musician Bruce Woodley (The Seekers) is 80. Rock musician Jim McCarty (The Yardbirds) is 79. Rock musician Verdine White (Earth, Wind & Fire) is 71. Singer-musician Jem Finer (The Pogues) is 67. Model-actor Iman is 67. Cartoonist Ray Billingsley (“Curtis”) is 65. Rock musician Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) is 64. Celebrity chef/TV personality Geoffrey Zakarian is 63. Actor-singer Bobbie Eakes is 61. Actor Katherine Kelly Lang is 61. Actor Illeana Douglas is 57. Country singer Marty Brown is 57. Actor Matt LeBlanc is 55. Actor Wendy Raquel Robinson is 55. Rock musician Paavo Lotjonen (PAH’-woh LAHT’-joh-nehn) (Apocalyptica) is 54. Actor D.B. Woodside is 53. Actor Miriam Shor is 51. Actor David Denman is 49. Actor Jay R. Ferguson is 48. Actor James Lafferty is 37. Actor Shantel VanSanten is 37. Actor Michael Welch is 35. Actor Linsey Godfrey is 34. Classical singer Faryl Smith is 27. Actor Mason Cook is 22. Actor Meg Donnelly (TV: “American Housewife”) is 21. Actor Pierce Gagnon is 17.