Today is Thursday, July 24, the 206th day of 2008. There are 160 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On July 24, 1858, Republican senatorial candidate Abraham Lincoln formally challenged Democrat Stephen A. Douglas to a series of political debates; the result was seven face-to-face encounters. On this date: In 1783, Latin American revolutionary Simon Bolivar was born in Caracas, Venezuela. In 1847, Mormon leader Brigham Young and his followers arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley in present-day Utah. In 1862, the eighth president of the United States, Martin Van Buren, died in Kinderhook, N.Y. In 1866, Tennessee became the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War. In 1929, President Hoover proclaimed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy. In 1937, the state of Alabama dropped charges against four of the nine young black men accused of raping two white women in the "Scottsboro Case." In 1948, Henry A. Wallace accepted the presidential nomination of the Progressive Party in Philadelphia. In 1959, during a visit to Moscow, Vice President Richard M. Nixon engaged in his famous "Kitchen Debate" with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Continued... |