In Iowa, Interstate 80 (I-80) enters at the Missouri River in Council Bluffs, extends east through the southern Iowa drift plain, passes around Des Moines and through Iowa City, and crosses into Illinois at the Mississippi River near Le Claire. I-80 is an American transcontinental Interstate Highway stretching from San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey. Before the Interstate was built, US Route 6 was the busiest highway in Iowa. In the early 1950s, a turnpike along the US 6 corridor was slated to be the first modern four-lane highway in the state, but those plans were shelved when the Interstate Highway System was created in 1956. The first section of I-80 opened in 1958 in the western suburbs of Des Moines, and new sections of the Interstate opened up regularly over the next twelve years. The final segment in Iowa, the Missouri River bridge to Omaha, Nebraska, opened in 1972. About one-third of Iowa's population lives along the I-80 corridor, most of which runs through farmland. (Full article...)

Samuel Croker-King's trepanning device

• ... that Irish surgeon Samuel Croker-King designed a new trepanning device (pictured) for cutting into the human skull?
• ... that player choices from The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit will have consequences in the upcoming video game Life Is Strange 2?
• ... that the Egyptian footballer Trézéguet was given his nickname due to his resemblance to former footballer David Trezeguet?
• ... that the adult tuatara tick Amblyomma sphenodonti can survive for over one year without feeding on tuatara blood?
• ... that before the cremation of former business executive Sun Fuling, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid his final respects at the cemetery?
• ... that in his book Fault Lines, Raghuram Rajan considered income inequality in the US to have been one of the underlying causes of the 2008 financial crisis?
• ... that mezzo-soprano Patricia Payne made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in Ponchielli's La Gioconda, and took part in the first performance of Britten's Peter Grimes in New Zealand?
• ... that in the kelp forests off the coast of Chile, sea urchins graze on the kelp, and starfish prey on the sea urchins?

France national football team

• A "duck boat" sinks in Table Rock Lake, United States, leaving seventeen people dead.
• In association football, the FIFA World Cup concludes with France (team pictured) defeating Croatia in the final.
• At least 154 people are killed and more than 220 others are injured in multiple bombings in Mastung and Bannu, Pakistan.
• Scientists announce the discovery of stone tools dating to 2.1 million years ago in Shangchen, China, the oldest evidence of hominins outside Africa.

July 21

Scopes Trial

• 230 – Pope Pontian began his pontificate, succeeding Urban I.
• 905 – Louis III, Holy Roman Emperor, was captured during his attempt to restore Carolingian power over Italy by King Berengar I and blinded.
• 1925 – American high school biology teacher John T. Scopes was found guilty (trial pictured) of violating Tennessee's Butler Act by teaching evolution in class.
• 1973 – Mossad agents mistakenly killed a Moroccan waiter as a result of an assassination attempt in Lillehammer, Norway, believing he had been involved in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.
• 2012 – Turkish adventurer Erden Eruç became the first person in history to complete a solo human-powered circumnavigation of the Earth.

Charles Tristan, marquis de Montholon (b. 1783) · Russell Lee (b. 1903) · Rilwanu Lukman (d. 2014)