On July 20, 1976, America’s Viking 1 robot spacecraft made a successful, first-ever landing on Mars.

Ten yea rs ago

President George W. Bush, addressing the annual meeting of the NAACP in Washington, said he knew racism existed in America and that many black voters distrusted his Republican Party; Bush promised to improve the GOP’s rocky relations with blacks. The Senate voted 98-0 to renew the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act for another quarter-century.

Five yea rs ago

Six Republican presidential hopefuls traded tweets in the first presidential debate conducted through Twitter, outlining their agendas across the popular social media service. The last fugitive sought by the U.N.’s Balkan war crimes tribunal, Gordan Hadzic, former leader of Croatia’s ethnic Serbs, was seized in a remote mountain forest in northern Serbia. (Attempts to try Hadzic for alleged war crimes have been suspended indefinitely because he has cancer and has been deemed too ill to participate in his trial.) NBA star Yao Ming announced his retirement in his hometown of Shanghai. German-born British painter Lucien Freud, 88, died in London.

One yea r ago

The United States and Cuba restored full diplomatic relations after more than five decades of frosty relations rooted in the Cold War. The U.N. Security Council unanimously endorsed a landmark deal to rein in Iran’s nuclear program. Banks in Greece finally reopened after being closed for three weeks. Zach Johnson won the British Open. Songwriter Wayne Carson, 72, died in Nashville, Tennessee. “Archie” cartoonist Tom Moore, 86, died in El Paso, Texas.

— By The Associated Press