July 21st Through Time: Bold Departures & Revolutionary Birthdays

On July twenty-first, 1925, a Tennessee high school teacher named John T. Scopes was fined one hundred dollars. His crime? Teaching evolution. Yesterday, we were on the Moon with Apollo 11, marveling at humanity's first steps onto another world. Well, today is about what happens NEXT. It’s a day of departures, of lifting off—not just from the lunar surface, but from old ideas, old conflicts, and old ways of telling stories. July twenty-first isn't just a date on the calendar; it’s a day that reminds us that every great leap forward begins with the courage to leave something behind. And oh, what a collection of departures we have today.

Let’s start with one of the most sobering. On this day in 1861, the first major land battle of the American Civil War was fought. The First Battle of Bull Run. Both the Union and the Confederacy went into it thinking this war would be short, heroic, maybe even glorious. They were so, so wrong. It was a brutal, chaotic, and bloody affair at Manassas, Virginia, and it ended in a shocking Confederate victory and a frantic Union retreat. It was the moment the entire country realized, with dawning horror, that this conflict would be a long, devastating slog. A grim departure from innocence.

On a MUCH lighter note, July twenty-first, 2023, gave us one of the most unexpected and frankly, joyous, cultural events in recent memory: "Barbenheimer." The simultaneous release of Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" and Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer." Who could have predicted it? A hot pink feminist fantasy and a three-hour biographical thriller about the father of the atomic bomb became a double-feature phenomenon. It was a beautiful, strange, and hilarious moment where the internet's sense of humor spilled into the real world and, for a weekend, packed movie theaters to the brim. It was a departure from the idea that audiences only want one kind of film.

And this day is packed with remarkable birthdays. The brilliant cartoonist Garry Trudeau, creator of "Doonesbury," was born today in 1948. For decades, he has held a mirror up to American politics with such wit and incisive commentary. It's just masterful. And on the same day, another incredible voice was born: the singer-songwriter Yusuf Islam, who the world first came to know as Cat Stevens. His songs—"Wild World," "Father and Son," "Peace Train"—they became the soundtrack for a generation searching for meaning. We also celebrate the birth of comedian Jon Lovitz in 1957. "Yeah, that's the ticket!" An absolute master of character from Saturday Night Live.

And Michael Connelly, the fantastic author behind the Harry Bosch series, born in 1956. He creates such a vivid, gritty portrait of Los Angeles through his crime novels. But there’s a darker note in history today, too. On July twenty-first, 1944, a nervous Adolf Hitler went on German radio to announce that an attempt on his life had failed. This was the famous July twentieth plot, Operation Valkyrie. The announcement confirmed the plot's failure and unleashed a wave of horrific reprisals. It's a chilling reminder of how close history came to a different path, and the terrible cost of that failure.

Each of these moments, from Bull Run to Barbenheimer, represents a kind of turning point, a day when the world tilted, just a little, on its axis. But let’s dive deeper into three events that truly define this day. The Scopes Trial, the birth of Ernest Hemingway, and the moment humanity left the moon. They seem unrelated, but I promise you, they are singing in harmony. First, let’s go to that sweltering courtroom in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925. The "Scopes Monkey Trial." Now, the story we usually hear is simple: a teacher was prosecuted for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution. But the reality is SO much more theatrical and, frankly, more important.

The trial was a setup. A deliberate provocation by the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge a new Tennessee law. John Scopes wasn't even sure he'd ever actually taught evolution. He was just the willing volunteer. The real show was the two lawyers. The legendary defense attorney Clarence Darrow versus the three-time presidential candidate and populist hero William Jennings Bryan, arguing for the prosecution. It was a clash of titans! A battle for the soul of America, broadcast across the country by radio. It was less a legal proceeding and more a national spectacle. The climax wasn't the verdict.

Oh, no. The climax was when Darrow called Bryan—the prosecutor!—to the stand as an expert witness on the Bible. It was an audacious, unheard-of move. For two hours, Darrow grilled Bryan on biblical literalism. Did Jonah really live inside a whale? Where did Cain get his wife? It was brutal. In the end, Scopes was found guilty. It was the expected outcome. He was fined that one hundred dollars. But here's the delightful twist: the verdict was later thrown out on a technicality. So in the end, John Scopes paid nothing. Because the fine, the verdict... that was never the point. The point was the conversation.

The trial forced a deeply uncomfortable, but absolutely necessary, debate about science, religion, and education into every living room in America. It was a departure from polite silence. It was the moment a modern idea, kicking and screaming, refused to be ignored any longer. Then, twenty-six years before that trial, on this same day in 1899, a boy was born in Oak Park, Illinois, who would spend his entire life departing from convention. Ernest Hemingway. Is that not perfect? Hemingway’s entire literary project was a break with the past. He looked at the ornate, flowery prose of the nineteenth century and just...

threw it out. He forged a new American style: clean, direct, stripped-down, and loaded with meaning beneath the surface. He famously sought to write "one true sentence." Think about that. In a world of spin and spectacle, just like that Tennessee courtroom, Hemingway was on a quest for the unvarnished truth. His characters are often grappling with the aftermath of conflict—World War One, the Spanish Civil War. They are people who have seen the old world and its grand pronouncements-"glory," "honor," "courage"-revealed as hollow. They are survivors, trying to find a code to live by in the wreckage.

Hemingway’s birth on this day feels like a prelude. A sign that a new century would demand new ways of speaking, new ways of seeing, and new ways of being true. And that brings us to 1969. To the surface of the Moon. On July twenty-first, after twenty-one hours and thirty-six minutes at Tranquility Base, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin prepared to leave. And here lies one of the most quietly terrifying and wonderful moments in human history. The ascent engine. The single engine that had to lift the top half of the lunar module, the "Eagle," off the moon and back into orbit to meet Michael Collins.

There was no backup. No second chance. If it failed, they were stranded. Permanently. And then, a problem. A circuit breaker switch, the one needed to arm that very engine, had broken off. Aldrin discovered it. Can you even imagine that moment? Two hundred and forty thousand miles from home, and a tiny plastic switch stands between you and ever seeing Earth again. They tried to sleep, but couldn't. They talked to Mission Control. And in the end, the solution was pure, beautiful, human ingenuity. Buzz Aldrin realized his felt-tip pen was non-conductive. He simply pushed the pen into the hole where the switch had been, the circuit closed, and the engine was armed.

A pen. A simple pen saved the Apollo 11 mission. At the designated time, they fired the engine. It worked. And the Eagle lifted off, leaving the descent stage behind—a monument on the moon that stands there to this day. So, what do we see when we look back at July twenty-first from our vantage point in 2026? We see a day of magnificent departures. In a Tennessee courtroom, America began its long, painful, and necessary departure from a world where science could be outlawed. With the birth of a boy in Illinois, literature began its departure from the sentimental past and strode into a stark, modern future.

And with a felt-tip pen and a single, perfect engine burn, two human beings departed from the surface of another world. Each of these moments was a gamble. Darrow gambled on public opinion. Hemingway gambled on a new way of writing. Armstrong and Aldrin gambled everything on a single engine. Today teaches us something profound about progress. It isn't a gentle, steady climb. It's a series of jolts. It's the courage to hit the launch button, to argue the unpopular case, to write the sentence that has never been written before. Progress is the art of the departure. It is the understanding that to get somewhere new, you must be willing to leave the safety of the ground you know.