Today in History.....July 24

On this day in …

1866, Tennessee became the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War

1929, President Hoover proclaimed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy

1943, British bombers raid Hamburg, Germany, by night in Operation Gomorrah, while Americans bomb it by day in its own "Blitz Week."

1959, During the grand opening ceremony of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev engage in a heated debate about capitalism and communism in the middle of a model kitchen set up for the fair. The so-called "kitchen debate" became one of the most famous episodes of the Cold War.

1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts -- two of whom had been the first men to set foot on the moon -- splashed down safely in the Pacific. The American effort to send astronauts to the moon had its origins in a famous appeal President John F. Kennedy made to a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961: "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth."

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

1975, an Apollo spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific, completing a mission which included the first-ever docking with a Soyuz capsule from the Soviet Union


1996, two bombs blamed on Tamil separatists ripped through a commuter train near Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing 64 civilians and wounding more than 400


2002, nine coal miners were trapped in a flooded mine in western Pennsylvania; the story ended happily three days later with the rescue of all nine