Today is Friday, July 25, the 207th day of 2008. There are 159 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On July 25, 1956, the Italian liner Andrea Doria collided with the Swedish passenger ship Stockholm off the New England coast late at night and began sinking; at least 51 people were killed.

On this date:

• In 1866, Ulysses S. Grant was named General of the Army of the United States, the first officer to hold the rank.

• In 1946, the United States detonated an atomic bomb near Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in the first underwater test of the device.

• In 1963, the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain initialed a treaty in Moscow prohibiting the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, in space or underwater.

• In 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the first “test tube baby,” was born in Oldham, England; she’d been conceived through the technique of in-vitro fertilization.

• In 1994, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan’s King Hussein signed a declaration at the White House ending their countries’ 46-year-old formal state of war.

Today’s Birthdays: Actress Barbara Harris is 73. Rock musician Verdine White (Earth, Wind & Fire) is 57.

Thought for Today: “The truth is all things seen under the form of eternity.”—George Santayana, Spanish-American philosopher (1863-1952).