13th July: Today In History

Today is Thursday, July 13th, the 194th day of 2017. There are 171 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

Events:

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.)

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 present-day Midwest.

1793:  French revolutionary writer Jean-Paul Marat was stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday, who was executed four days later.

1863:  Deadly rioting against the Civil War military draft erupted in New York City. (The insurrection was put down three days later.)

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.

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).

1960:  John F. Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination on the first ballot at his party’s convention in Los Angeles.

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.)

1972:  George McGovern received the Democratic presidential nomination at the party’s convention in Miami Beach. 

1978:  Lee Iacocca was fired as president of Ford Motor Co. by chairman Henry Ford II.

1985:  “Live Aid,” an international rock concert in London, Philadelphia, Moscow and Sydney, took place to raise money for Africa’s starving people.

1999:  Angel Maturino Resendiz (ahn-HEHL’ mah-tyoo-REE’-noh reh-SEHN’-deez), suspected of being the “Railroad Killer,” surrendered in El Paso, Texas. (Resendiz was executed in 2006.)

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.

Birthdays:

Game show announcer Johnny Gilbert (TV: “Jeopardy!”) is 93.

Actor Patrick Stewart is 77.

Actor Robert Forster is 76.

Actor Harrison Ford is 75.

Singer-guitarist Roger McGuinn (The Byrds) is 75.

Actor-comedian Cheech Marin is 71.

Actress Daphne Maxwell Reid is 69.

Actress Didi Conn is 66.

Singer Louise Mandrell is 63.

Rock musician Mark “The Animal” Mendoza (Twisted Sister) is 61.

Quotes Of The Day:

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.