[as per usual, this is not the entire story, you'll want to go to WCBS for that] ••
Highlights in history on this date:
On July 10, 1940, during World War II, the Battle of Britain began as Nazi forces began attacking southern England by air. (The Royal Air Force was ultimately victorious.
1943 - Allied forces land in Sicily, Italy, during World War II.
1962 - Telstar satellite is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, bringing live television from the United States to Europe for the first time. Europe never recovers.
1973 - The Bahamas gains independence after three centuries of British rule.
1976 - Four mercenaries — three British and one American — are executed by firing squad in Angola as three rebel movements struggle for power after the country's decolonization from Portugal in 1975.
1985 - Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior is bombed by French saboteurs in Auckland.
1991 - Boris Yeltsin takes oath of office as first elected president of Russia; U.S. President George Bush lifts economic sanctions against South Africa.
1996 - Unmanned Galileo spacecraft captures stunning close-up pictures of Ganymede, Jupiter's biggest moon.
1998 - A U.N. conference produces a draft treaty on a world criminal court that would grant the prosecutor sweeping authority, a measure vigorously opposed by the United States.
2001 - A New York jury spares the life of a Tanzanian terrorist in the deadly 1998 bombing of a U.S. embassy in Africa, opting instead for a sentence of life in prison without parole.
2002 - Marine archaeologists discover the PT-109 warship piloted by the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy during World War II off the Soloman Islands.
Today's Birthdays:
Jean Calvin, French religious reformer (1509-1564); Camille Pissarro, French painter (1830-1903); Nicholas Tesla, Croatian engineer and Inventor (1856-1943); Marcel Proust, French writer (1871-1922); Toyohiko Kagawa, Japanese writer (1888-1960); Giorgio de Chirico, Italian painter (1888-1978); Saul Bellow, U.S. writer (1915-2005); Hugo Banzer, president of Bolivia (1926-2002); Arthur Ashe, U.S. tennis player (1943-1993); Jessica Simpson, pop singer/actress (1980--).
