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Chicago Tribune
21-07-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Today in History: Scopes monkey trial ends
Today is Monday, July 21, the 202nd day of 2025. There are 163 days left in the year. Today in History: On July 21, 1925, the so-called 'Monkey Trial' ended in Dayton, Tennessee, with John T. Scopes found guilty of violating state law for teaching Darwin's Theory of Evolution. (The conviction was later overturned.) Scopes monkey trial, broadcast by WGN radio, held nation in thrall 100 years agoColumn: Returning again to the Scopes 'monkey trial,' and what I learnedAlso on this date: In 1861, during the Civil War, the first Battle of Bull Run was fought at Manassas, Virginia, resulting in a Confederate victory. In 1944, American forces landed on Guam during World War II, capturing it from the Japanese some three weeks later. In 1954, the Geneva Conference concluded with accords dividing Vietnam into northern and southern entities. In 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin blasted off from the moon aboard the ascent stage of the lunar module for docking with the command module. In 1970, construction of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt was completed. In 1972, the Irish Republican Army carried out 22 bombings in Belfast, Northern Ireland, killing nine people and injuring 130 in what became known as 'Bloody Friday.' In 2002, Ernie Els won the British Open in the first sudden-death finish in the 142-year history of the tournament. In 2008, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, one of the world's top war crimes fugitives, was arrested in a Belgrade suburb by Serbian security forces. (He was sentenced by a U.N. court in 2019 to life imprisonment after being convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.) In 2011, the 30-year-old space shuttle program ends as Atlantis landed at Cape Canaveral, Florida, after the 135th shuttle flight. In 2012, Erden Eruc became the first person to complete a solo, human-powered circumnavigation of the globe. In 2023, the 'Barbenheimer' buzz reached its peak as the films 'Barbie' and 'Oppenheimer' opened in theaters; the critical and public acclaim for both films led to the fourth-largest weekend box office of all time. Column: The lesson Hollywood should learn from 'Barbenheimer'? Let originality come Birthdays: Singer Yusuf Islam (also known as Cat Stevens) is 77. Cartoonist Garry Trudeau is 77. Author Michael Connelly is 69. Comedian Jon Lovitz is 68. Retired soccer player Brandi Chastain is 57. Rock-soul singer Michael Fitzpatrick (Fitz and the Tantrums) is 55. Actor/singer Charlotte Gainsbourg is 54. Actor Justin Bartha is 47. Actor Josh Hartnett is 47. Reggae singer Damian Marley is 47. Basketball Hall of Famer Tamika Catchings is 46. Former MLB All-Star pitcher CC Sabathia is 45. Singer Blake Lewis ('American Idol') is 44. Latin singer Romeo Santos is 44. Actor Betty Gilpin is 39. Actor Juno Temple is 36. Actor Rory Culkin is 36.
Winnipeg Free Press
21-07-2025
- Business
- Winnipeg Free Press
Letters, July 21
Opinion Energy plans Upon seeing the $7-billion price tag for upgrading the hydro system, my first thought was: how much dispersed hydro generation could that buy? And wouldn't that be safer than having so many of our energy eggs in one vulnerable basket? This reminds me of a few years ago when one of the Hydro honchos essentially told us they were in the hydro power business, not the wind and solar power business. My thought then was that a more responsible stance would be to consider themselves to be in the electric energy business — for Manitoba — whatever the source. Indeed, new power technology options are being developed every day. Our myopic reliance on giant hydro plants and long, long transmission corridors might very well become non-primary technology. And the most vulnerable option for our province. I may be missing something in all this, but I am not confident that Hydro has embraced a power generation worldview that isn't literally water/hydro powered. And I still wonder what's their vision on power generation beyond that? And as a Crown corporation, what's their sense of their role and responsibility in all this? Dan O'Dell Winnipeg The detailed analysis in the Free Press confirms what many Manitobans have long suspected but few in government have had the courage to address: Manitoba Hydro is teetering on the edge of a financial precipice. The staggering $20-billion debt load, combined with poor governance, lack of strategic vision, and politically manipulated rates, has created a dangerous imbalance — one that now threatens the financial health of both the utility and the province itself. Projects like Keeyask and Bipole III have ballooned in cost and delivered questionable value. Meanwhile, repeated political interference — from rate suppression to board turnover — has left Hydro rudderless, unable to make sound long-term decisions or invest wisely in future infrastructure. Let's not be misled: low rates have neither attracted major employers nor benefited taxpayers in the long run. In fact, they have effectively masked inefficiencies and delayed a necessary shift toward demand management, conservation, and green energy innovation. The result? Nearly $1 billion in annual interest payments and mounting risk of a credit downgrade. It is time to stop treating Hydro as a political tool and start governing it like the complex, high-stakes utility it is. That means restoring board independence, grounding rate decisions in economic reality, and holding Hydro leadership accountable for productivity and fiscal discipline. Manitobans deserve transparency, not talking points. Yog Rahi Gupta Winnipeg Blending faith and science Re: 100 years later, the Scopes 'Monkey Trial' still resonates (Think Tank, July 17) It is true, as Allan Levine argues, that the supposed conflict between science and the Bible still resonates today. One reason for this is that in our polarized world we tend to view reality through one lens only while excluding other explanations. This too often puts science on the scrimmage line against a particular understanding of the Bible. But science and the Bible, properly understood, are not opposing explanations; they complement one another. Science can be understood as a kind of map with its own way of describing reality. But a map of Canada does not exhaust our understanding of Canada. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights argues that all persons are created with equal dignity and rights. Science can help us understand this conviction, but we need something beyond the maps of science to more fully grasp it. And we need an understanding of the Bible other than creationism in order to engage science with integrity. Yes, this issue does have to do with life's meaning. Ray Harris Winnipeg Talk elsewhere Re: 'Hold your conversation' (Letters, July 15) Bravo to letter writer Ken McLean for voicing the concern that many of us have at live performances and in particular at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. If you must have a conversation, please take it away from the seating area where other people are trying to listen to the performance. Don't just raise your voice so that your friend can hear you above the performer. And, if someone asks you to take your chat elsewhere, please don't look at them as if you're the one who's being inconvenienced. Don Sourisseau Winnipeg Water bill too high We are all enjoying the wonderful summer so far, being at the lake, travelling or at home. If you are living in a house particularly in Winnipeg, please look at your recent water bill statement from the water and waste department. You might be surprised that an unexpected high water bill arrived to be paid within a period of time. Wow! Why am I paying such a high amount for water for a three-month period, I ask myself. What's with this statement? Is the amount due, correct? Is there a possibility of a calculated error? I called the water department recently. Their reply to my question: the city is building a new treatment plant, therefore we need revenue to complete the project. As I see it, to compensate for any losses in construction of this endeavour, Winnipeggers will cover the deficit. From December of 2024 to June of 2025, my water bill has increased by 15 per cent. Why such an increase? If you look at your water bill, the sewer cost ratio is probably almost twice in comparison to the water usage. Did your area have any sewer upgrades? If it did, then the increase justifies the water bill amount. My area hasn't had any sewer work done to substantiate an increase in fees. As Winnipeggers, we are being bombarded this year with a property tax increase, garbage collection increase and a water bill increase, 'three strikes' and many people are out financially. This is unreasonable and unsustainable. Grocery prices are skyrocketing, inflation is growing and imposed tariffs have a negative impact on our economy. Tremendous strain on the citizens of Winnipeg. What is next to swallow? My recommendation to the city, to alleviate the burden of paying the high water bills, is to introduce the same format that Manitoba Hydro operates on, pay monthly not quarterly. People would be able to budget and manage their financial monthly household expense, not get burdened with astronomical water bills. Peter John Manastyrsky Winnipeg Well wishes for columnist Re: Finally at a loss for an opinion (Think Tank, July 12) I am certain I join many readers of these pages in saying a heartfelt 'thank you' to professor Paul Thomas for the huge contribution his thoughtful columns have brought to the public issues of our times. His was always an informative and well-researched voice. I wish him well. Paul Moist Winnipeg
UPI
21-07-2025
- Politics
- UPI
On This Day, July 21: Monkey Trial ends with guilty verdict in Tennessee
1 of 3 | On July 21, 1925, the so-called Monkey Trial, which pitted Clarence Darrow against William Jennings Bryan in Dayton, Tenn., in one of the great confrontations in legal history, ended with John Thomas Scopes convicted and fined $100 for teaching evolution in violation of state law. UPI File Photo July 21 (UPI) -- On this date in history: In 1861, the first major military engagement of the Civil War occurred at Bull Run Creek, Va. In 1918, a German U-boat fired on the town of Orleans, Mass., on Cape Cod peninsula, damaging a tug boat and sinking four barges, and severely injuring one man. It was the only place in the United States to receive an enemy attack during World War I. In 1925, the so-called Monkey Trial, which pitted Clarence Darrow against William Jennings Bryan in Dayton, Tenn., in one of the great confrontations in legal history, ended with John Thomas Scopes convicted and fined $100 for teaching evolution in violation of state law. In 1969, U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, lifted off from the moon in the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle and docked with the command module Columbia piloted by Michael Collins. In 1970, after 11 years of construction, the massive Aswan High Dam across the Nile River in Egypt was completed, ending the cycle of flood and drought in the Nile River region but triggering an environmental controversy. In 2000, a report from special counsel John Danforth cleared U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and the government of wrongdoing in the April 19, 1993, fire that ended the Branch Davidian siege near Waco, Texas. File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI In 2007, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final installment in the best-selling series, sold more than 8.3 million copies on its first day in bookstores. In 2011, Greece continued efforts to climb out of a financial chasm with a second bailout pledge from other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund worth $157 billion. Earlier, the nation dealt with its debt crisis with the help of a $146 billion loan package. In 2024, President Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid in the 2024 presidential race, formally endorsing his vice president, Kamala Harris. Former President Donald Trump defeated Harris in November 2024 to win his second term in office. File Photo by Melina Mara/UPI
National Post
11-07-2025
- Politics
- National Post
Colby Cosh: How evolution won the creationist culture war
Article content We've lost awareness of how weird this was. If the Monkey Trial had never taken place, and an expert historian were asked in 2025 to name the two greatest American orators of the period, 'Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan' might still be the answer you would get. Nothing of this kind had ever happened before, nor has it happened since: an actual criminal jury trial with honest-to-God mega-celebrities acting as counsel on both sides. Article content The trial was, we now know, a thoroughly contrived occasion for 'culture war' cooked up by the ACLU and some of its friends in the American liberal establishment. In 2025 we are more than familiar with such things: anybody who has internet access would understand, would say without pausing for a second thought, that William Jennings Bryan was being 'trolled.' But when the trial began it seemed that the trolling effort was bound to fail. Article content The judge, John T. Raulston, accepted some written evidence on the scientific evidence for evolution, but refused to allow experts to be cross-examined in court, and tried to stick to the actual issue in the case: had defendant Scopes broken the law of Tennessee? With the defence left hanging, Darrow asked if Bryan would be willing to face questioning as an expert on the text and teaching of the Bible. Bryan, who was as eager as Darrow to add some theatrical colour to the proceedings, unwisely agreed. Article content The result was a confrontation that has become immortal, mostly through the avenue of the oft-adapted play Inherit the Wind. (The Darrow-versus-Bryan parts of the play are quite faithful to the trial transcript. These gentlemen didn't need help creating drama.) Darrow, who is perhaps still the archetypal American unbeliever, asked village-atheist questions about the accuracy and consistency of the Bible. Bryan became flustered, indignant and abusive, and did much more poorly in handling Darrow's questions than any decently educated fundamentalist would now. Article content When the dust settled, Scopes was found guilty and fined $100. His conviction was appealed to the state Supreme Court, which upheld the Butler Act; however, the amount of Scopes's fine was technically contrary to the state's constitution, and the appeal judge, observing that Scopes had long since moved on from Tennessee, urged against a re-trial. Article content I have written about the Scopes trial a time or two, and I am a little sad to say that it appears to be losing its hold on the popular imagination. Partly this is because the famous people involved are no longer famous. But the culture war has also moved on from the topic of biological evolution to a surprising degree, hasn't it? When I was a young man, and the year 2000 still lurked in the future, there was a brief vogue among religious folk for varieties of 'scientific creationism' that might somehow locate the hand of God in the story of humanity. In retrospect, 'scientific creationism' seems like a fatal compromise, and little is heard of it in the era of cheap DNA sequencing. You might object to the possibility that you had distant Neanderthal ancestors, but, if you care to, you can pay someone a few hundred bucks to find out the exact quantum of Neanderthal DNA in your cells. Article content In other words, almost everyone has accepted the premises that the Butler Act was specifically designed to condemn: man did 'descend' from 'lower' beasts, from primates, and if God intended for there to exist a creature in His own image, evolution seems to be how He went about it. Bryan and the Tennessee legislature believed that the Bible was literally true, and that its divine status and meaning would be annihilated by conceding any presence of mere allegory or metaphor or instructive invention. Article content Even today's evangelical fundamentalists aren't usually that fundamentalist. Indeed, in 1925 Bryan himself proved shaky on the witness stand, conceding that the six-day Creation might not have involved 144 actual hours of clock time. I daresay, even speaking as an atheist, that it seems a touch insulting to the Bible to regard it as a brute factual record or as some sort of unartful consumer-product manual. Article content
San Francisco Chronicle
10-07-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
A century after a man was convicted of teaching evolution, the debate on religion in schools rages
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — One hundred years ago, a public high school teacher stood trial in Dayton, Tennessee, for teaching human evolution. His nation is still feeling the reverberations today. The law books record it as State of Tennessee v. John T. Scopes. History remembers it as the ' Monkey Trial.' The case ballooned into a national spectacle, complete with a courthouse showdown between a renowned, agnostic defense attorney and a famous fundamentalist Christian politician who defended the Bible on the witness stand. In a sweltering, pre-air conditioning courtroom, the trial became a linchpin for a tense debate that wasn't just a small-town aberration. 'This is a broad-based culture war of which the Scopes trial is just one place lightning struck,' says James Hudnut-Beumler, professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Today, new state laws requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms are facing legal challenges. As the Supreme Court leans right, there is an ongoing conservative push to infuse more religion — often Christianity — into taxpayer-funded education. Advocates of religious diversity and church-state separation are countering it in capitols, courts and public squares. 'We are fighting on an almost daily basis,' says Robert Tuttle, a religion and law professor at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. That Tennessee jury found Scopes guilty of violating the state's Butler Act — of teaching 'any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible.' A century later, the role of religion in public schools — and whether to keep it out entirely — is still being fiercely debated. Some perceive a threat to their spot in the culture While attempts to interlace America and the divine are not new, from the last half of the 20th century to today they are driven by a perceived threat among white Christians who think their dominant spot in politics and culture is being eroded by secularism or multiculturalism, Tuttle says. Other recent examples of the debate over religion in schools include adding chaplains and Bibles to classrooms, infusing designated prayer time into the school day and expanding voucher programs that can be used at religious schools. At the Supreme Court, the justices effectively stopped the first taxpayer-funded Catholic charter school and gave parents a religious exemption for LGBTQ+-related instruction. Tuttle's scholarship was used in the recent federal appeals court ruling that declared Louisiana's Ten Commandments law unconstitutional, citing a similar Kentucky law the Supreme Court ruled against in 1980. Tuttle and his co-author, Ira Lupu, assert that the principles underlying the Establishment Clause — the First Amendment's ban on the government establishing a religion — remain alive despite arguments that cite a change made in a 2022 school prayer ruling by the Supreme Court. 'We have good reasons not to concede the battlefield to the forces aimed at eliminating the idea of a secular state,' their article states. 'When they overclaim their victories, others should speak up.' The day after the court ruling, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Texas Ten Commandments bill that had easily passed the GOP-controlled state legislature. Lawsuits have been filed to block it and the Arkansas law that was approved earlier this year. Abbott has taken on a Ten Commandments issue before. He reiterated his support for the new law while celebrating the 20th anniversary of his 2005 Supreme Court victory that prevented efforts to tear down the Commandments monument on the grounds of the state Capitol. 'I will always defend the historical connection between the Ten Commandments and their influence on the history of Texas,' he says in a video posted on X. Texas Values, a conservative Christian law and policy nonprofit, rallied support for the Texas bill. If other ideals are shared in the classroom, the Ten Commandments should be able to be shared as well, says Mary Elizabeth Castle, director of government relations for the organization. A similar argument was made in 1922 by Scopes prosecutor William Jennings Bryan, a onetime populist firebrand who became the face of the anti-evolution movement. 'If the Bible cannot be taught, why should Christian taxpayers permit the teaching of guesses that make the Bible a lie?' Bryan wrote in The New York Times. 'A teacher might just as well write over the door of his room, 'Leave Christianity behind you, all ye who enter here.'' The arc of the religion-in-schools debate is long About 60 years earlier, advances in biblical criticism caused conservative Christians to double down on rejecting anything they believe conflicted with their interpretation of the Bible, human evolution included, says Hudnut-Beumler. He blames weaponized post-World War I rhetoric for spreading anti-evolution beliefs to legislation. He sees parallels to today. 'Whatever we're going through now,' he says, 'it's the product of people manufacturing rhetoric in a way that stokes fear.' Castle sees the 2022 school prayer decision as a step in the right direction. 'There's always just going to be that conflict where people are trying to trample on religious freedom,' she says, 'and so that's why we do the work that we do.' The American Civil Liberties Union, joined by other legal groups, is representing the families in Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas that sued to block new Ten Commandments laws. A much younger ACLU, boosted by the star power of defense attorney Clarence Darrow, represented Scopes, who agreed to be a test case challenging the Butler Act and to bring attention to Dayton. Daniel Mach, who directs the ACLU program on freedom of religion and belief, sees a through line between 1925 and what he describes as a present-day assault on the separation of church and state. 'There are those who want to use the machinery of the state — and in particular, our public schools — to impose their religious beliefs on everyone else,' Mach says. 'The constitutional guarantee of church-state separation has served us as a nation quite well over the years in general. And there's simply no reason to turn back the clock now.' In 1925, the ACLU lost the Scopes case. It would be more than 40 years before the Supreme Court would overrule an anti-evolution teaching ban. But the trial, which took place from July 10-21, dealt a big hit to Bryan's reputation. He died days after it ended. Though a brief legal circus, the trial inflamed social divisions. Conservatives and fundamentalists in the Midwest and South felt mocked by those they considered liberal, East Coast elites. 'They were humiliated,' Tuttle says. 'That's internalized, and it carries through.' In the 1940s, tensions flared with a school funding case before the Supreme Court. They returned in the 1960s when the justices ruled against school-sponsored prayer and Bible readings. It was upsetting, Tuttle says, to conservative Christians who saw schools as a source of morality. 'The link you see with the Scopes case is a sense of alienation and devaluing of what civic experience means to them,' he says. Suzanne Rosenblith, an expert on religion in public education at the University at Buffalo in New York, sees the wave of court cases as primarily First Amendment tensions. 'Your argument for removing something can be seen as ensuring that Congress makes no law respecting the establishment of religion. And my wanting something included, that's my way of exercising my right to religious freedom,' she says. 'And it could be on the same issue.' A lesson to be learned from the last 100 years, Rosenblith says, is that America remains a pluralist democracy and needs to be approached as such. 'All sides are going to win some and lose some,' she says. 'But how can we treat each other, especially those with whom we disagree on these significant issues, how do we treat each other more seriously?' ___
