Week 29: July 20-26
July 20, 1969
On this day, four days after being launched into space by the massive Boeing-built Saturn V S-1C first-stage rocket, the Apollo 11 lunar module “Eagle” touched down in the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon’s surface.
In Seattle, nearly 2,000 people watched the landing and moon walk at the Pacific Science Center, culminating with Armstrong’s first step on the moon at 7:56 p.m. Pacific time.
July 20, 1990
On this day, Ted Turner’s Goodwill Games opened in Seattle. Conceived as an apolitical alternative to the Olympics, the games promise international goodwill through world-class competition. Some 2,300 athletes from 54 countries compete in 21 sports in Western Washington, Spokane, and the Tri-Cities. The games and the companion Goodwill Arts Festival, conferences, and friendship activities promised to do for the region what the World’s Fair did in 1962.
July 21, 1989
On this day, tribal canoes participating in the Paddle to Seattle arrived at the city’s Golden Gardens Park. Seventeen tribes from around Puget Sound and the Washington coast have restored or built canoes, and tribal members have learned how to paddle in the open water of the Pacific Ocean and in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound. The occasion was part of Washington’s centennial celebration and would develop into a nearly annual event known as Canoe Journey, with tribes and First Nations from Western Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska participating. Canoe Journey would also become a significant element in the revival of regional tribes’ cultural traditions in the early twenty-first century.
July 25, 1963
On this day, police arrested 22 persons in the first arrests of the civil rights movement in Seattle. The demonstrators were protesting Mayor Gordon S. Clinton’s nominees for a newly created human rights commission. Protesters had occupied the chambers of the city council for four days and were arrested after refusing a police order to leave.
July 26, 2007
On this day, about 40 tribal canoes from Puget Sound, the Washington coast, and Vancouver Island landed at Lighthouse Park in Mukilteo, south of Everett, as part of the 2007 Intertribal Canoe Journey.
The landing and the traditional celebration that followed were the largest intertribal gathering at the site, also known as Point Elliott, since January 22, 1855, when 82 leaders of Puget Sound tribes signed the Treaty of Point Elliott, giving up almost all their land in return for small reservations and perpetual fishing and hunting rights.
This post is in partnership with HistoryLink, and Warren Seyler, former chairman Spokane Tribe of Indians, the Black Muse Resource Center, and the Living Arts Cultural Heritage.
We encourage you to engage in further research through your local historic societies, museums, archives, and community.
