TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Sunday, July 14, the 195th day of 2019. There are 170 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On July 14, 1980, the Republican national convention opened in Detroit, where nominee-apparent Ronald Reagan told a welcoming rally he and his supporters were determined to “make America great again.” On this date: In 1789, in an event symbolizing the start of the French Revolution, citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille prison and released the seven prisoners inside.

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 1912, American folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie (“This Land Is Your Land”) was born in Okemah, Okla.

In 1921, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco (SAK’oh) 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 1966, the city of Chicago awoke to the shocking news that eight student nurses had been brutally slain during the night in a South Side dormitory. Drifter Richard Speck was convicted of the mass killing and condemned to death, but had his sentence reduced to life in prison, where he died in 1991.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter won the Democratic presidential nomination at the party’s convention in New York.

In 2003, newspaper columnist Robert Novak publicly revealed the CIA employment of Valerie Plame, wife of Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador in Africa who said the administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq.

In 2004, the 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, thousands of demonstrators across the country protested a Florida jury’s decision the day before to clear George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.