Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is July 11. It was on this date back in 1804 that the most prominent duel ever fought in the United States took place. Vice President Aaron Burr shot and killed his hated political enemy, Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury and architect of the nation's political economy, in an "affair of honor" in Weehawken, N.J. Though charged with murder and discredited publicly, Burr returned to Washington and served out his term, immune from prosecution. Advertisement Chicken Little was right. It was on this date in 1979 that America's Skylab space station -- launched May 14, 1973 -- fell to earth, scattering tons of debris across the Indian Ocean and Australian desert. It had been calculated that the chances of being hit by a piece of Skylab was one in 152, but there were no known casualties. Two explosions sank the 160-ft. Rainbow Warrior, flagship of the Greenpeace environmental activist group, in Auckland, New Zealand, on this date in 1985. A photographer aboard the ship was killed. The blasts caused an international uproar. The Rainbow Warrior had been scheduled to take part in protests against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific, and France later acknowledged responsibility in the incident. Advertisement World War II hero Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate, with Richard Nixon as his running mate, on this date in 1952. They were elected that November. 20 years after the overthrow of the South Vietnam government to invading communist forces from the North, the United States resumed diplomatic relations with Vietnam on this date in 1995. We now return you to the present, already in progress.
