Today in history
Today is Thursday, July 13, the 194th day of 2017. There are 171 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History
On July 13, 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
In 1787, the Congress of the Confederation adopted the Northwest Ordinance, which established a government in the Northwest Territory, an area corresponding to the eastern half of the presentday Midwest.
In 1793, French revolutionary writer Jean-Paul Marat was stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday, who was executed four days later.
In 1863, deadly rioting against the Civil War military draft erupted in New York City. (The insurrection was put down three days later.)
In 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.
In 1955, Britain hanged Ruth Ellis, a 28-year-old former model convicted of killing her boyfriend, David Blakely (to date, Ellis is the last woman to be executed in the United Kingdom).
In 1960, John F. Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination on the first ballot at his party’s convention in Los Angeles.
In 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.)
In 1972, George McGovern received the Democratic presidential nomination at the party’s convention in Miami Beach.
In 1978, Lee Iacocca was fired as president of Ford Motor Co. by chairman Henry Ford II.
In 1985, “Live Aid,” an international rock concert in London, Philadelphia, Moscow and Sydney, took place to raise money for Africa’s starving people.
In 1999, Angel Maturino Resendiz (ahn-HEHL’ mahtyoo-REE’-noh reh-SEHN’deez), suspected of being the “Railroad Killer,” surrendered in El Paso, Texas. (Resendiz was executed in 2006.)
In 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.
Ten years ago: Former media mogul Conrad Black was convicted in Chicago of swindling the Hollinger International newspaper empire out of millions of dollars. (Black was sentenced to 6½ years in federal prison, but had his sentence reduced to three years; he was freed in May 2012.) Family prayer services and a huge public outpouring in Austin, Texas, ushered in three days of memorial ceremonies honoring the late Lady Bird Johnson.
Five years ago: His credibility under attack, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney insisted he had “no role whatsoever in the management” of Bain Capital, a private equity firm, after early 1999, and demanded that President Barack Obama apologize for campaign aides who persisted in alleging otherwise.