31-07-2025
Today in History: Phelps sets Olympic medal record
In 1715, a fleet of Spanish ships carrying gold, silver, and jewelry sank during a hurricane off the east Florida coast; of some 2,500 crew members, more than 1,000 died.
In 1775, 250 years ago, General George Washington ordered Major Benjamin Tupper to take 300 men and destroy Boston Light house. The men overwhelmed the British but the tides left them stranded on the island and vulnerable to British reinforcements. Nonetheless, the soldiers defeated the British a second time on the Little Brewster Island before returning to the mainland.
In 1777, the 19-year-old Marquis de Lafayette received a commission as major general in the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress.
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In 1919, Germany's Weimar Constitution was adopted by the republic's National Assembly.
In 1945, Pierre Laval, premier of the pro-Nazi Vichy government in France, surrendered to US authorities in Austria; he was turned over to France, which later tried and executed him.
In 1957, the Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations designed to detect Soviet bombers approaching North America, went into operation.
In 1964, the US lunar probe Ranger 7 took the first close-up images of the moon's surface.
In 1971, Apollo 15 crew members David Scott and James Irwin became the first astronauts to use a lunar rover on the surface of the moon.
In 1972, vice-presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton withdrew from the Democratic ticket with George McGovern following disclosures that Eagleton had received electroshock therapy to treat clinical depression.
Also that year, Massachusetts Correction Officer Alfred Baranowski and Correction Officer James Souza were shot and killed during an escape attempt by a convicted murderer from the Norfolk Prison. The state's maximum-security facility in Lancaster was named after them.
In 1973, Delta Air Lines Flight 723 undershot the runway in Logan International Airport amid low visibility and collided with a sea wall. The crash, the worst commercial aviation disaster in New England, would eventually take the lives of all 89 people on board.
In 1991, President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) in Moscow.
In 2012, at the Summer Olympics in London, swimmer Michael Phelps won his 19th Olympic medal, becoming the most decorated Olympian of all time. (He would finish his career with 28 total Olympic medals, 23 of them gold.)
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In 2020, a federal appeals court overturned the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, saying the judge who oversaw the case didn't adequately screen jurors for potential biases. (The Supreme Court reimposed the sentence in 2022.)
