TODAY IN HISTORY
On July 14, 1789, in an event symbolizing the start of the French Revolution, citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille prison and released the seven prisoners inside.
Also on this date
In 1798, Congress passed the Sedition Act, making it a federal crime to publish false, scandalous or malicious writing about the United States government.
In 1865,
the Matterhorn, straddling Italy and Switzerland, was summited as a seven-member party led by British climber Edward Whymper reached the peak. (Four members of the party fell to their deaths during their descent; Whymper and two guides survived.)
In 1914,
Robert H. Goddard received a U.S. patent for a liquidfueled rocket apparatus.
In 1921,
Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted in Dedham, Massachusetts, of murdering a shoe company paymaster and his guard. (Sacco and Vanzetti were executed six years later.)
In 1933,
all German political parties, except the Nazi Party, were outlawed.
In 2004,
the U.S Senate scuttled a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. (Forty-eight senators voted to advance the measure — 12 short of the 60 needed — and 50 voted to block it).
In 2013,
demonstrators across the country protested a Florida jury’s decision the day before to clear George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
In 2014,
the Church of England voted in favor of allowing women to become bishops.
In 2016,
terror struck Bastille Day celebrations in the French city of Nice as a large truck plowed into a crowd, killing 86 people in an attack claimed by Islamic State extremists; the driver was shot dead by police.
Ten years ago:
An Iranian nuclear scientist who had disappeared a year earlier headed back to Tehran, telling Iranian state media that he’d been abducted by CIA agents. (The U.S. said Shahram Amiri was a willing defector who had changed his mind.)
Five years ago:
World powers and Iran struck a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from international sanctions.
One year ago:
President Donald Trump tweeted that four congresswomen of color, all liberal Democrats, should go back to the “broken and crime infested” countries they came from; all of the women were American citizens, and three were born in the U.S.