Today In History

Today is Thursday, July 13, the 194th day of 2017. There are 171 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

› 1977: A blackout hit New York City in the mid-evening as lightning strikes on electrical equipment caused power to fail; widespread looting broke out. (The electricity was restored about 25 hours later.)

ON THIS DATE

› 1939: Frank Sinatra made his first commercial recording, “From the Bottom of My Heart” and “Melancholy Mood,” with Harry James and His Orchestra for the Brunswick label.

› 1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall to be U.S. Solicitor General; Marshall became the first black jurist appointed to the post. (Two years later, Johnson nominated Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court.)

› 1985: “Live Aid,” an international rock concert in London, Philadelphia, Moscow and Sydney, took place to raise money for Africa’s starving people.

› 2013: A jury in Sanford, Florida, acquitted neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman of all charges in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager; news of the verdict prompted Alicia Garza, an African-American activist in Oakland, California, to declare on Facebook that “black lives matter,” a phrase that gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.