Today in History....July 26

On this day in …


* 1775, Benjamin Franklin became Postmaster-General

* 1945, Winston Churchill resigned as Britain's prime minister after his Conservatives were soundly defeated by the Labour Party.
(Clement Attlee became the new prime minister.)

* 1947, President Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff

* 1952, King Farouk I of Egypt abdicated in the wake of a coup led by Gamal Abdel Nasser

* 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal

* 1956, the Italian liner Andrea Doria sank off New England, 11 hours after colliding with the Swedish liner Stockholm; at least 51 people died

* 1971, Apollo 15 was launched from Cape Kennedy

* 1986, kidnappers in Lebanon, practitioners of that "religion of peace", released the Rev. Lawrence Martin Jenco, an American hostage held for nearly 19 months

* 2002, the Republican-led House voted, 295-132, to create an enormous Homeland Security Department, the biggest government reorganization in decade

* 2006, in a dramatic turnaround from her first murder trial, a jury in Houston found Andrea Yates not guilty by reason of insanity in the drowning of her children in the bathtub; she was committed to a state mental hospital. ALSO: A thinner but combative Saddam Hussein returned to his trial for the first time since his hunger strike and hospitalization.