This Day in History: July 23

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This Day In History: July 23

Take a look at all of the important historical events that took place on July 23.

On this day, July 23 ...

1967: The first of five days of deadly rioting erupts in Detroit as an early morning police raid on an unlicensed bar results in a confrontation with local residents that escalates into violence that spreads into other parts of the city; 43 people, mostly Black people, are killed.

Also on this day:

• 1829: William Austin Burt receives a patent for his "typographer," a forerunner of the typewriter.
• 1885: Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, dies in Mount McGregor, N.Y., at age 63.
• 1914: Austria-Hungary presents a list of demands to Serbia following the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serb assassin; Serbia's refusal to agree to the entire ultimatum leads to the outbreak of World War I.
• 1962: The first public TV transmissions over Telstar 1 take place during a special program featuring live shots beamed from the United States to Europe, and vice versa.
• 1977: A jury in Washington, D.C., convicts 12 Hanafi Muslims of charges stemming from the hostage siege at three buildings the previous March.

Vanessa Williams poses after being crowned Miss America 1984 in Atlantic City, N.J., September 17, 1983. (AP Photo/Files)

• 1984: Vanessa Williams becomes the first Miss America to resign her title after nude photographs of her taken in 1982 are published in Penthouse magazine.
• 1990: President George H.W. Bush announces his choice of Judge David Souter of New Hampshire to succeed the retiring Justice William J. Brennan on the U.S. Supreme Court.

• ​​​​​1996: At the Atlanta Olympics, Kerri Strug makes a heroic final vault, despite torn ligaments in her left ankle as the U.S. women gymnasts clinch their first-ever Olympic team gold medal.

(AP Photo/FBI via World Wide Web)

• 1997: The search for Andrew Cunanan, the suspected killer of designer Gianni Versace and others, ends as police find his body on a houseboat in Miami Beach; it's an apparent suicide.
• 1999: Space shuttle Columbia blasts off with the world's most powerful X-ray telescope and Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a U.S. space flight.
• 2001: Pope John Paul II urges President George W. Bush in their first meeting, held at Castel Gandolfo, Italy, to bar creation of human embryos for medical research.
• 2003: A new audiotape purported to be from toppled dictator Saddam Hussein calls on Iraqis to resist the U.S. occupation.
• 2003: Massachusetts' attorney general issues a report saying clergy members and others in the Boston Archdiocese probably had sexually abused more than 1,000 people over a period of six decades.

• 2011: Singer Amy Winehouse, 27, is found dead in her London home from accidental alcohol poisoning.

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• 2019: The Senate overwhelmingly passes a bipartisan bill to ensure a victims' compensation fund related to the Sept. 11 attacks never runs out of money, fulfilling a pledge made by President Trump and ending years of uncertainty.