On This Day in History: July 21

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

On this day in 1970, Aswan High Dam is completed. Construction for the dam began in 1960.

More than two miles long at its crest, the massive $1 billion dam ended the cycle of flood and drought in the Nile River region, and exploited a tremendous source of renewable energy, but had a controversial environmental impact.

A dam was completed at Aswan, 500 miles south of Cairo, in 1902. The first Aswan dam provided valuable irrigation during droughts but could not hold back the annual flood of the mighty Nile River.

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The giant reservoir created by the dam–300 miles long and 10 miles wide–was named Lake Nasser (in honor of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser). The formation of Lake Nasser required the resettlement of 90,000 Egyptian peasants and Sudanese Nubian nomads, as well as the costly relocation of the ancient Egyptian temple complex of Abu Simbel, built in the 13th century B.C.

The Aswan High Dam brought the Nile’s devastating floods to an end, reclaimed more than 100,000 acres of desert land for cultivation, and made additional crops possible on some 800,000 other acres. The dam’s 12 giant Soviet-built turbines produce as much as 10 billion kilowatt-hours annually, providing a tremendous boost to the Egyptian economy and introducing 20th-century life into many villages. The water stored in Lake Nasser, several trillion cubic feet, is shared by Egypt and the Sudan and was crucial during the African drought years of 1984 to 1988.

Despite its successes, the Aswan High Dam has produced several negative side effects. Most costly is the gradual decrease in the fertility of agricultural lands in the Nile delta, which used to benefit from the millions of tons of silt deposited annually by the Nile floods. Another detriment to humans has been the spread of the disease schistosomiasis by snails that live in the irrigation system created by the dam. The reduction of waterborne nutrients flowing into the Mediterranean is suspected to be the cause of a decline in anchovy populations in the eastern Mediterranean. The end of flooding has sharply reduced the number of fish in the Nile, many of which were migratory. Lake Nasser, however, has been stocked with fish, and many species, including perch, thrive there.

 356 BC  – Herostratus sets fire to the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

285 – Diocletian appoints Maximian as Caesar and co-ruler.

365 – A tsunami devastates the city of Alexandria, Egypt. The tsunami is caused by an earthquake estimated to be 8.0 on the Richter Scale. 5,000 people perished in the Alexandria, and 45,000 more died outside of the city.

1403 – Battle of Shrewsbury: King Henry IV of England defeats rebels to the north of the county town of Shropshire, England.

1545 – The first landing of French troops on the coast of the Isle of Wight during the French invasion of the Isle of Wight occurs.

1568 – Eighty Years’ War: Battle of Jemmingen – Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva defeats Louis of Nassau.

1718 – The Treaty of Passarowitz between the Ottoman Empire, Austria and the Republic of Venice is signed.

1774 – Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774: Russia and the Ottoman Empire sign the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji ending the war.

1831 – Inauguration of Leopold I of Belgium, first king of the Belgians.

1861 – American Civil War: First Battle of Bull Run – at Manassas Junction, Virginia, the first major battle of the war begins and ends in a victory for the Confederate army.

1865 – In the market square of Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok shoots and kills Davis Tutt in what is regarded as the first true western showdown.

1873 – At Adair, Iowa, Jesse James and the James-Younger gang pull off the first successful train robbery in the American Old West.

1877 – After rioting by Baltimore and Ohio Railroad workers and the deaths of nine rail workers at the hands of the Maryland militia, workers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania stage a sympathy strike that is met with an assault by the state militia.

1904 – Louis Rigolly, a Frenchman, becomes the first man to break the 100 mph (161 km/h) barrier on land. He drove a 15-liter Gobron-Brille in Ostend, Belgium.

1918 – U-156 shells Nauset Beach, in Orleans, Massachusetts. This is the first time that the United States is shelled since the Mexican-American War.

1919 – The dirigible Wingfoot Air Express crashes into the Illinois Trust and Savings Building in Chicago, killing 12 people.

1925 – Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John T. Scopes is found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $100.

1925 – Sir Malcolm Campbell becomes the first man to break the 150 mph (241 km/h) land barrier at Pendine Sands in Wales. He drove a Sunbeam to a two-way average of 150.33 mph (242 km/h).

1944 – World War II: Battle of Guam – American troops land on Guam starting the battle. It would end on August 10.

1944 – World War II: Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and fellow conspirators are executed in Berlin, Germany for the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

1949 – The United States Senate ratifies the North Atlantic Treaty.

1954 – First Indochina War: The Geneva Conference partitions Vietnam into North Vietnam and South Vietnam.

1959 – Elijah Jerry “Pumpsie” Green becomes the first African-American to play for the Boston Red Sox, the last team to integrate. He came in as a pinch runner for Vic Wertz and stayed in as shortstop in a 2-1 loss to the Chicago White Sox.

1960 – Sirimavo Bandaranaike is elected prime minister of Sri Lanka and becomes the first woman prime minister in the world.

1961 – Mercury program: Mercury-Redstone 4 Mission – Gus Grissom piloting Liberty Bell 7 becomes the second American to go into space (in a suborbital mission).

1969 – Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin become the first men to walk on the Moon, during the Apollo 11 mission

1970 – After 11 years of construction, the Aswan High Dam in Egypt is completed.

1972 – Bloody Friday bombing by the Provisional Irish Republican Army around Belfast, Northern Ireland – 22 bomb explosions, 9 people killed and 130 people seriously injured.

1973 – In the Lillehammer affair in Norway, Israeli Mossad agents kill a waiter whom they mistakenly thought was involved in 1972’s Munich Olympics Massacre.

1976 – Christopher Ewart-Biggs British ambassador to the Republic of Ireland is assassinated by the Provisional IRA.

1977 – The start of a four day long Libyan-Egyptian War takes place.

1994 – Tony Blair is declared the winner of the leadership election of the British Labour Party, paving the way for him to become Prime Minister in 1997.

1995 – Third Taiwan Strait Crisis: The People’s Liberation Army begins firing missiles into the waters north of Taiwan.

1997 – The fully restored USS Constitution (aka “Old Ironsides”) celebrates her 200th birthday by setting sail for the first time in 116 years.

2005 – Four terrorist bombings, occurring exactly two weeks after the similar July 7 bombings, target London’s public transportation system. All four bombs fail to detonate and all four suspected suicide bombers are captured and later convicted and imprisoned for long terms.

2008 – Bosnian-Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic is arrested in Serbia and is indicted by the UN’s ICTY tribunal.