Wednesday, July 13

This Day In History

• 1793   French revolutionary writer Jean Paul Marat was stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday, who was executed four days later.
• 1812   The first pawnbroking ordinance was passed in New York City on this day.
• 1832   U.S. Indian agent and explorer Henry Schoolcraft stumbled upon the source of the Mississippi River. Its 2,552-mile journey to the Gulf of Mexico begins at Lake Itasca, Minnesota.
• 1836   John Ruggles of Thomaston, Maine received patent #1 from the U.S. Patent Office under a new patent-numbering system. Before Ruggles, a U.S. senator from Maine and the author of the 1836 Patent Act which brought back the examination process, there had been 9,957 non-numbered patents issued. Ruggles received his patent for a traction wheel used in locomotive steam engines.
• 1863   Rioting against the Civil War military draft erupted in New York City; about 1,000 people died over three days.
• 1925   Reporters covering the Broadway beat were most impressed by Will Rogers, an Oklahoma cowboy, who had been standing in for W.C. Fields on a temporary basis in the "Ziegfeld Follies".
• 1960   John F. Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination at the party's convention in Los Angeles.
• 1967   Race-related rioting broke out in Newark, N.J.; by the time the violence ended four days later, 27 people had been killed.
• 1978   Lee Iacocca was fired as president of Ford Motor Co. by chairman Henry Ford II.
• 1985   Before undergoing surgery for colon cancer, President Ronald Reagan transferred power temporarily to Vice President George Bush. It was the first time the Constitution's presidential disability clause was invoked.
• 1985   Live Aid, an international rock concert in London, Philadelphia, Moscow and Sydney, Australia, was held to raise money for Africa's starving people.
• 1994   Tonya Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, was sentenced in Portland, Ore., to two years in prison for his role in the attack on Harding's skating rival, Nancy Kerrigan.
• 1998   A jury in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., ruled that the Rev. Al Sharpton and two others had defamed a former prosecutor by accusing him of raping Tawana Brawley.
• 1999   Angel Maturino Resendiz, suspected of being the ''railroad killer,'' surrendered in El Paso, Texas.
• 2003   With the blessing of U.S. administrators, Iraqis inaugurated a broadly representative governing council.

Happy Birthday To

• 100 B.C.   Julius Caesar (Roman writer, orator, politician, emperor, dictator: “I came, I saw, I conquered.”; month of July named for him; assassinated Mar 15, 44 B.C.)
• 1886   Father Edward Joseph Flanagan (Catholic priest, founder of Boys Town, Omaha NE; died May 14, 1948)
• 1913   Dave Garroway (TV talk-show host: Today, Garroway at Large; died July 21, 1982)
• 1935   Jack Kemp (football: NFL QB: San Diego Chargers, Buffalo Bills; U.S. congressman from NY [1971-1989]: chairman of House Republican Conference [1980-1987]; U.S. presidential candidate [1988]; U.S. Secretary of Housing & Urban Development [1989-1992]; Republican party candidate for vice-president [w/Bob Dole: 1996])
• 1940   Patrick Stewart (actor: Star Trek: The Next Generation [series], Gunmen, Excalibur, L.A. Story, Conspiracy Theory, X-Men)
• 1942   Harrison Ford (actor: The Fugitive, Clear and Present Danger, Presumed Innocent, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Star Wars, Apocalypse Now, American Graffiti, Sabrina, The Devil’s Own, Air Force One, Six Days Seven Nights, Random Hearts)