On This Day: Thursday July 21, 2005 This is the 202nd day of the year, with 163 days remaining in 2005. Fact of the Day: Hemingway American short-story writer and novelist Ernest Hemingway never went to college, was repeatedly rejected for military service because of a bad eye, but got into World War I as an ambulance driver. He received the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Old Man and the Sea (1952), a short heroic novel about an old Cuban fisherman who, after an extended struggle, hooks and boats a giant marlin only to have it eaten by voracious sharks during the long voyage home. This book played a role in gaining for Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, after which he wrote very little. He shot himself on July 2, 1961, the victim of depression. Holidays Feast day of St. Laurence of Brindisi, St. Victor of Marseilles, St. Arbogastes, and St. Praxedes. Belgium: National Day. Guam: Liberation Day. Events 1733 - John Winthrop was granted the first honorary Doctor of Law degree in the U.S., by Harvard College. 1798 - The Battle of the Pyramids took place, in which Napoleon, soon after his invasion of Egypt, defeated an army of some 60,000 Mamelukes. 1831 - Belgium became independent as Leopold I was proclaimed king. 1861 - The first Battle of Bull Run was fought at Manassas, Virginia -- a Confederate victory. 1925 - John T. Scopes was convicted of violating state law for teaching Darwin's Theory of Evolution (later overturned). 1930 - The U.S. Veterans Administration was established. 1944 - Guam, in the western Pacific Ocean, which had been under Japanese occupation since Dec 1941, was retaken by U.S. Marines. 1949 - The U.S. Senate ratified the North Atlantic Treaty. 1954 - France surrendered North Vietnam to the Communists. 1961 - Captain Virgil "Gus" Grissom became the second American to orbit the Earth, aboard the Liberty Bell 7. 1970 - The Aswan High Dam across the Nile River in Egypt is completed. 2002 - Telecommunications giant WorldCom, Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection, shortly after disclosing it had inflated profits by nearly $4 billion through deceptive accounting. 2004 - The September 11 panel was harshly critical of the U.S. government in its voluminous report released after a 19-month investigation. The report called for sweeping changes in American intelligence agencies. Births 1816 - Paul Julius von Reuter, German news agency founder. 1899 - Ernest Hemingway, American Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize-winning author. 1899 - Hart Crane, American poet. 1911 - Marshall McLuhan, American university professor and author. 1920 - Isaac Stern, American concert violin impresario. Deaths 1796 - Robert Burns, Scottish poet. 1967 - Basil Rathbone, British character actor.