Moments in Time – July 3, 2024

#MiddleburyCT

• On July 15, 1838, Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered the Divinity School Address at Harvard Divinity School, which was met with a negative outburst by many Unitarian theologians who considered his ideas radical and an attack on their faith.
• On July 16, 1979, Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq. His 24-year rule was marked by costly and unsuccessful wars with neighboring countries and brutal atrocities against his own people.
  On July 17, 1918, the ocean liner Carpathia, which had rescued the survivors of the doomed Titanic six years earlier, was sunk by three torpedoes from a German U-boat during World War I. Five people died, but the rest were picked up by the HMS Snowdrop.
• On July 18, 2013, the city of Detroit, Michigan, became the largest municipal entity in the United States to declare bankruptcy, with up to $20 billion in debt. The decision was made by Kevyn Orr, an emergency manager appointed by then-Governor Rick Snyder, and the filing revealed that the city’s largest creditors were its pensioners.
• On July 19, 1961, TWA became the first airline to begin showing regularly scheduled in-flight movies with the presentation of “By Love Possessed,” starring Lana Turner, to first-class passengers on a flight from New York to Los Angeles.
• On July 20, 2011, basketball player Yao Ming, one of China’s most popular athletes, announced his retirement from the NBA. Ming, who stood at over 7 feet tall, played with the Houston Rockets and had broken his foot the previous year. He had also missed a number of games in the last six seasons due to foot and ankle injuries.
• On July 21, 1987, Enzo Ferrari unveiled the Ferrari F40 at the factory in Maranello, Italy, to celebrate four decades of Ferrari production, telling assembled journalists that he had “expressed my wish to the engineers – build a car to be the best in the world. And now the car is here.” At the time, the F40 was the fastest road vehicle ever built, with a top speed of 201 mph.

© 2024 King Features Synd., Inc.