Today in History: July 22, First solo around-the-world flight

Today in History

Today is Wednesday, July 22, the 203rd day of 2026. There are 162 days left in the year.

Today in History:

On July 22, 1933, aviator Wiley Post landed at Floyd Bennett Field in New York City, completing the first solo flight around the world in 7 days, 18 hours and 49 minutes.

Also on this date:

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln presented to his Cabinet a preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.

In 1934, bank robber John Dillinger was shot to death by federal agents outside Chicago's Biograph Theater, where he had just seen the Clark Gable movie "Manhattan Melodrama."

In 1937, the U.S. Senate rejected President Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court.

In 1942, the Nazis began transporting Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka concentration camp.

In 1943, American forces led by Gen. George S. Patton captured Palermo, Sicily, during World War II.

In 1975, the House of Representatives joined the Senate in voting to restore the American citizenship of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

In 1991, police in Milwaukee arrested Jeffrey Dahmer, who later confessed to killing 17 men and boys. (Dahmer was sentenced to life in prison and was killed by another inmate in 1994).

In 1992, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar escaped from his luxury prison near Medellin (meh-deh-YEEN'). (He was killed by security forces in December 1993.)

In 2011, Anders Breivik (AHN'-durs BRAY'-vihk), a self-described "militant nationalist," massacred 69 people at a Norwegian island youth retreat after detonating a bomb in nearby Oslo that killed eight others in the nation's worst violence since World War II.

In 2015, a federal grand jury indictment charged Dylann Roof, the young man accused of killing nine Black church members in Charleston, South Carolina, with 33 counts including hate crimes that made him eligible for the death penalty. (Roof would become the first person sentenced to death for a federal hate crime; he is on death row at a federal prison in Indiana.)

In 2022, Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of Donald Trump, was convicted of contempt charges for defying a congressional subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. (After challenging his conviction, Bannon served a four-month prison sentence in 2024 and was released.)

Today's Birthdays: Singer George Clinton is 85. Movie writer-director Paul Schrader is 80. Actor Danny Glover is 80. Singer Mireille Mathieu is 80. Actor-comedian-director Albert Brooks is 79. Rock singer Don Henley is 79. Author S.E. Hinton is 78. Film composer Alan Menken is 77. Jazz musician Al Di Meola (mee-OH'-lah) is 72. Actor Willem Dafoe is 71. Actor John Leguizamo is 66. R&B singer Keith Sweat is 65. Folk singer Emily Saliers (Indigo Girls) is 63. Actor-comedian David Spade is 62. Actor Rhys Ifans (rees EYE'-fanz) is 59. Actor/singer Jaime Camil is 53. Singer Rufus Wainwright is 53. Actor Selena Gomez is 34. Actor and boxer Javon Walton is 20. Prince George of Wales, eldest son of Britain's Prince William and Catherine, Princess of Wales, is 13.