1977 – The world's first Global Positioning System (GPS) signal was transmitted from Navigation Technology Satellite 2 (NTS-2) and received at Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at 12:41 a.m. Eastern time (ET).

2024 ─ The International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered a ruling stating that Israel should end its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. The ICJ identified that all member states of the UN are under an obligation not to recognize the occupation as legal nor "render aid or assistance" toward maintaining Israel's presence in the occupied territories.

 Red_Dragon wrote:

Indeed! 

 SeriousLee wrote:

Now it might best be described as the downfall of civilization?

 Red_Dragon wrote:

I remember those days when it was called the World Wide Web and not the Internet.

1925 – Adolf Hitler publishes Mein Kampf.

1968 – Intel is founded in Mountain View, California.

1992 – A picture of Les Horribles Cernettes was taken, which became the first ever photo posted to the World Wide Web.

2013 – The Government of Detroit, with up to $20 billion in debt, files for the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

1850 – Vega becomes the first star (other than the Sun) to be photographed.

1962 – Nuclear weapons testing: The "Small Boy" test shot Little Feller I becomes the last atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada National Security Site.

1998 – A diplomatic conference adopts the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, establishing the permanent international court in The Hague, to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.

1935 – The world's first parking meter is installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

1945 – Manhattan Project: The Atomic Age begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon near Alamogordo, New Mexico.

1951 – J. D. Salinger publishes his popular yet controversial novel, The Catcher in the Rye.

1799 – The Rosetta Stone is found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard during Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign.

1834 – The Spanish Inquisition is officially disbanded after nearly 356 years.

1838 – Ralph Waldo Emerson delivers the Divinity School Address at Harvard Divinity School, discounting Biblical miracles and declaring Jesus a great man, but not God. The Protestant community reacts with outrage.

1942 – The Holocaust: Nazi Germany begins the deportation of 100,000 Jews from the occupied Netherlands to extermination camps.

 mannixj wrote:

It was also considered settled science back then as well.

 kurtster wrote:

Exactly. DNA was discovered only 40 years later (Watson's & Crick's double helix).  Instead, many scientists were measuring skull forms in search for patterns matching with burglars, murderers, etc. - "Human Races" and their peculiarities were comparatively studied and that "knowledge" was considered modern science.

 Red_Dragon wrote:

Directly patterned after the American Progressive (Bull Moose) Party's ideals. T Roosevelt was a major advocate.



Context and Ideology

• The Progressive View: In the early 20th century, many reformers viewed eugenics not as a tool for hatred, but as a progressive, scientific method for improving public health, reducing poverty, and "uplifting" the human race. 

1789 – Storming of the Bastille in Paris. This event escalates the widespread discontent into the French Revolution. Bastille Day is still celebrated annually in France.

1798 – The Sedition Act of 1798 becomes law in the United States making it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the United States government.

1933 – In a decree called the Gleichschaltung, Adolf Hitler abolishes all German political parties except the Nazis.

1933 – Nazi eugenics programme begins with the proclamation of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring requiring the compulsory sterilization of any citizen who suffers from alleged genetic disorders.

1957 – Rawya Ateya takes her seat in the National Assembly of Egypt, thereby becoming the first female parliamentarian in the Arab world.

1960 – Jane Goodall arrives at the Gombe Stream Reserve in present-day Tanzania to begin her study of chimpanzees in the wild.

1965 – Mariner 4 flyby of Mars takes the first close-up photos of another planet. The photographs take approximately six hours to be transmitted back to Earth.

2015 – NASA's New Horizons probe performs the first flyby of Pluto, and thus completes the initial survey of the Solar System.

Two years ago today was the first of a string of staged fake assassination attempts on Trump.

1956 – The Dartmouth workshop is the first conference on artificial intelligence.

1789 – In response to the dismissal of the French finance minister Jacques Necker, the radical journalist Camille Desmoulins gives a speech which results in the storming of the Bastille two days later.

1948 – Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion orders the expulsion of Palestinians from the towns of Lod and Ramala.

1973 – A fire destroys the entire sixth floor of the National Personnel Records Center of the United States.

1801 – French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons makes his first comet discovery. In the next 27 years he discovers another 36 comets, more than any other person in history.

1914 – Babe Ruth makes his debut in Major League Baseball.

1921 – Former president of the United States William Howard Taft is sworn in as 10th chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the only person ever to hold both offices.

1922 – The Hollywood Bowl opens.

1947 – The Exodus 1947 heads to Palestine from France.

1960 – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is first published, in the United States.

1962 – First transatlantic satellite television transmission.

1962 – Project Apollo: At a press conference, NASA announces lunar orbit rendezvous as the means to land astronauts on the Moon, and return them to Earth.

1977 – Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated in 1968, is posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

1979 – America's first space station, Skylab, is destroyed as it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.

1890 – Wyoming is admitted as the 44th U.S. state.

1925 – Scopes trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins of John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher accused of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act.

1962 – Telstar, the world's first communications satellite, is launched into orbit.

1985 – The Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior is bombed and sunk in Auckland harbour by French DGSE agents, killing Fernando Pereira.

1997 – In London, scientists report the findings of the DNA analysis of a Neanderthal skeleton which supports the "out of Africa theory" of human evolution, placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

1998 – Catholic Church sexual abuse cases: The Diocese of Dallas agrees to pay $23.4 million to nine former altar boys who claim they were sexually abused by Rudolph Kos, a former priest.

2012 – The Episcopal Church USA allows same-sex marriage.

2019 – The final Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the line in Puebla, Mexico; the last of 5,961 "Special Edition" cars will be exhibited in a museum.

1868 – The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing African Americans full citizenship and all persons in the United States due process of law.

1962 – Starfish Prime tests the effects of a nuclear explosion at orbital altitudes.

1986 – The New Zealand Parliament passes the Homosexual Law Reform Act legalizing homosexuality in New Zealand.