Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is July 24 At 12:51 EDT on this date in 1969, Apollo 11, the U.S. spacecraft that had taken the first astronauts to the surface of the moon, safely returned to Earth. The American effort to send astronauts to the moon had its origins in a famous appeal President John F. Kennedy made to a special joint session of Congress eight years earlier: "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth." The flight was a success but the astronauts were quarantined for a few days by NASA officials who feared "moon germs" might have also returned from the lunar surface. Kennedy unfortunately was not on hand to witness the feat, having died in 1963 at the hand of an assassin. Advertisement On this date in 1847, after 17 months and many miles of travel, Brigham Young led 148 Mormon pioneers into Utah's remote Valley of the Great Salt Lake and began preparations for the thousands of Mormon migrants who would follow. Seeking religious and political freedom, the Mormons migrated from the east after the murder of Joseph Smith, the Christian sect's founder and first leader. Advertisement A gunman opened fire inside the crowded tourist entrance of the Capitol building in Washington on this date in 1998. Two police officers were killed and a tourist was wounded before officers shot the gunman. He survived and later was charged with murder. It was on this date in 1679 that New Hampshire became a royal colony of the British crown. And on this date in 1701, French explorer Antione de la Mothe Cadillac landed in what's now Detroit. And the same Scottish scientists who'd produced Dolly the cloned sheep announced on this date in 1997 that they had cloned a sheep with human genes. We now return you to the present, already in progress.
