FRIDAY JULY 13
1881, Wild West outlaw Billy The Kid is shot and killed by Pat Garrett.
1928 Actor Bob Crane (Hogan’s Heroes) is born. He dies in 1978.
1947, Europe accepts the Marshall Plan to aid European recovery following World War II.
1960, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy wins the Democratic presidential nomination at his party’s convention in Los Angeles.
1967, Race riots break out in Newark, New Jersey. Twenty-seven people die in the rioting, which lasts five days.
1973, Don Everly of the Everly Brothers tells his brother Phil that he plans to leave the group after a concert the next day. The duo would actually split up onstage during their performance.
1977, New York City experiences a 25-hour blackout after lightning strikes a transformer in upstate New York.
1985, Arthur Ashe becomes the first African-American inducted into the International Tennis Hall Of Fame.
1985, Live Aid is held in the U.S. at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia and in the U.K. at Wembley Stadium in London. The concert features sets from Led Zeppelin, with Phil Collins on drums; the Who; Mick Jaggerand Tina Turner backed by Hall & Oates and the Temptations; Bob Dylan backed by Rolling Stonesguitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood; U2; Santana; Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; David Bowie; Elton John; George Thorogood; Madonna; the Thompson Twins; Duran Duran; Power Station; Black Sabbath reunited with Ozzy Osbourne; Run-D.M.C.;Judas Priest; and many others.
1990, The movie Ghost, starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, and Whoopi Goldberg, opens.
1999, Stanley Kubrick‘s final directorial effort, Eyes Wide Shut, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, opens nationwide.
SATURDAY JULY 14
1789, citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille prison and released the seven prisoners inside, beginning the French Revolution. France celebrates the holiday as Bastille Day.
1853, the first U.S. World’s Fair opened at the Crystal Palace in New York.
1912 Folk singer Woody Guthrie is born. He dies in 1967
1921, Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted in Massachusetts of killing of a shoe company paymaster and his guard. They were executed six years later.
1933, all German political parties except the Nazi Party were outlawed.
1933 That famous spinach-eating sailorman makes his debut in Popeye The Sailor.
1938 1960s anti-war activist Jerry Rubin is born. He dies in 1994.
1946, Dr. Benjamin Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care was published. It became one of the best selling books in history.
1953, the birthplace of George Washington Carver was declared a National Monument, the first dedicated to an African-American.
1957, the comedy team Lou Costello and Bud Abbott officially ended their partnership.
1969, the movie Easy Rider premiered, starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson.
1976, Jimmy Carter won the Democratic presidential nomination by an overwhelming margin at the party’s convention in New York.
1991, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad accepted President Bush‘s compromise proposal for a Middle East peace conference.
1994, Scores of Hutu refugees from Rwanda’s civil war flooded across the border into Zaire, swamping relief organizations.
1999, race-based school busing in Boston came to an end after 25 years.
2000, A Florida jury ordered five major tobacco companies to pay smokers a record $145 billion in punitive damages.
2000 The movie X-Men, starring Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen,James Marsden, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Tyler Mane, Ray Park, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, andBruce Davison, opens.
SUNDAY JULY 15
1815, Napoleon Bonaparte formally surrendered to the British. He was later sent into exile on St Helena.
1822, Philadelphia opened its public school system to black students.
1870, Georgia became the last of the Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.
1912, Jim Thorpe won the decathlon in the Olympic games in Stockholm, Sweden.
1916, Boeing Co., originally known as Pacific Aero Products, was founded in Seattle by William Boeing.
1968, the daytime soap opera One Life to Live debuted.
1971, President Richard Nixon announced he would visit the People’s Republic of China to seek a “normalization of relations” with the Communist nation. He went the following February.
1979, President Carter delivered his infamous “malaise” speech, in which he lamented a “crisis of confidence” in America, scolding Americans for not having the spirit and self-discipline necessary to combat energy shortages and inflation.
1987, former National Security Adviser John Poindexter testified at the Iran-Contra hearings that he had never told President Ronald Reagan about using Iranian arms sales money for the Contras in order to protect the president from possible political embarrassment.
1992 Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton claims the Democratic presidential nomination at the party’s convention in New York.
1995 The first item is sold on Amazon.com.
1996 MSNBC, a 24-hour all-news network, makes its debut on cable and the Internet.
1997, Fashion designer Gianni Versace was shot to death on the steps of his mansion in Miami Beach, Florida. Police believe Andrew Phillip Cunanan shot Versace. Cunanan committed suicide a week later on a houseboat about two miles north of the Versace mansion.
2000, the American Tobacco Company’s near-mint condition 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card sold for $1.2 million in an eBay online auction.
2002, “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh pleaded guilty to two felony charges in a deal that spared him from life in prison. Lindh pleaded guilty to supplying help to the Taliban and carrying explosives, for which he will serve a 20-year sentence.