On This Day in History - July 22nd - Almanac

Today is Wednesday, July 22, the 203rd day of 2015 with 162 to follow.

The moon is waxing. Morning stars are Mars, Mercury, Neptune and Uranus. Evening stars are Jupiter, Saturn and Venus.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Cancer. They include poet Emma Lazarus in 1849; painter Edward Hopper in 1882; U.S. political family matriarch Rose Kennedy in 1890; U.S. psychiatrist Karl Menninger in 1893; poet Stephen Vincent Benet in 1898; sculptor Alexander Calder in 1898; Robert Dole, longtime U.S. senator/1996 GOP presidential nominee, in 1923 (age 92); actor Orson Bean in 1928 (age 87); fashion designer Oscar de la Renta in 1932; actor Louise Fletcher in 1934 (age 81); actor Terence Stamp in 1938 (age 77); "Jeopardy!" game show host Alex Trebek in 1940 (age 75); actor/singer Bobby Sherman in 1943 (age 72); actor Danny Glover in 1946 (age 69); comedian/actor Albert Brooks in 1947 (age 68); musician Don Henley in 1947 (age 68); composer Alan Menken in 1949 (age 66); actor Willem Dafoe in 1955 (age 60); R&B singer Keith Sweat in 1963 (age 52); comedian John Leguizamo in 1964 (age 51) comedian David Spade in 1964 (age 51); actor Colin Ferguson in 1972 (age 43); singer Rufus Wainwright in 1973 (age 42); actor/singer Selena Gomez in 1992 (age 23); Britain's Prince George of Cambridge in 2013 (age 2).

On this day in history:

In 1793, Canadian explorer Alexander Mackenzie reached the Pacific.

In 1864, in the first battle of Atlanta, Confederate troops under Gen. John Hood were defeated by Union forces under Gen. William Sherman.

In 1916, a bomb hidden in a suitcase exploded during a Preparedness Day parade on San Francisco's Market Street, killing 10 people and wounding 40. The parade was in support of the United States' entrance into World War I.

In 1933, Wiley Post completed his first solo flight around the world. It took him 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes.

In 1934, bank robber John Dillinger died in a hail of bullets from federal agents outside Chicago's Biograph Theater.

In 1994, a U.S. federal judge ordered The Citadel, a state-financed military college in Charleston, S.C., to open its doors to women.

In 2003, Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusai were killed by U.S. forces in a 6-hour firefight at a house in Mosul in northern Iraq.

In 2008, jailed polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs and four other members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints were indicted by a grand jury in Texas on charges of child sexual assault. (Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison.)

In 2009, millions of people across Asia sought vantage points to view a rare 6 1/2-minute solar eclipse, longest of the 21st century.

In 2011, Anders Behring Breivik, a 33-year-old Norwegian right-wing extremist, boasted he was responsible for the massacre of 77 people in Norway's worst peacetime atrocity. (He denied criminal guilt at his Oslo trial, however, saying he was trying to stop a Muslim takeover.)

In 2013, Prince William's wife, Kate, gave birth to a son, third in line to the British throne. The baby was named George Alexander Louis (Prince George of Cambridge).

In 2014, Joko Widodo was officially declared the winner of the recent Indonesian presidential election, carrying 53 percent of the vote.

A thought for the day: "Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time." -- Rabindranath Tagore