Today in History: Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin walk on the moon

Boston Globe

20-07-2025

In 1775, 250 years ago, Major Joseph Vose of Milton led about 400 soldiers and rowers on a raid on Boston Light, which was held by British troops. The patriots stripped the lighthouse of furniture and the island of gunpowder and set afire the lighthouse. This was the latest in a series of raids -- including off Cape Ann -- destroying light houses and other navigation aids thought to benefit the British. Vose's forces also stripped the Nantasket Peninsula of grains.
In 1917, America's World War I draft lottery began as Secretary of War Newton Baker, wearing a blindfold, reached into a glass bowl and pulled out a capsule containing the number 258 during a ceremony inside the Senate office building.
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In 1944, an attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb failed as the explosion only wounded the Nazi leader.
In 1951, Jordan's King Abdullah I was assassinated in Jerusalem by a Palestinian gunman who was shot dead by security.
In 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon after reaching its surface in their Apollo 11 lunar module.
In 1976, America's Viking 1 robot spacecraft made a successful, first-ever landing on Mars.
In 1977, a flash flood hit Johnstown, Pa., killing more than 80 people and causing $350 million worth of damage.
In 1990, Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, one of the court's most liberal voices, announced he was stepping down.
In 1993, White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster Jr., 48, was found shot to death in a park near Washington, D.C.; it was ruled a suicide.
In 2006, the Senate voted 98-0 to renew the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act for another quarter-century.
In 2007, President George W. Bush signed an executive order prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment, including humiliation or denigration of religious beliefs, in the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects.
In 2012, gunman James Holmes opened fire inside a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, during a midnight showing of 'The Dark Knight Rises,' killing 12 people and wounding 70 others. (Holmes was later convicted of murder and attempted murder, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.)
In 2015, the United States and Cuba restored full diplomatic relations after more than five decades of frosty relations rooted in the Cold War.
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