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.

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 1881, outlaw William H. Bonney Jr., alias “Billy the Kid,” was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner in present-day New Mexico.

In 1913, Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr., the 38th president of the United States, was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. in Omaha, Nebraska.

In 1917, CBS newsman Douglas Edwards, who in 1948 became network television’s first nightly news anchor, was born in Ada, Oklahoma.

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. Cartoon character Popeye the Sailor made his movie debut in the Fleischer Studios animated short, “Popeye the Sailor.”

In 1945, Italy formally declared war on Japan, its former Axis partner during World War II.

In 1958, the army of Iraq overthrew the monarchy.

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 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.”

In 1999, race-based school busing in Boston came to an end after 25 years.

“If the government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away everything you have.” — President Gerald R. Ford (19132006).