This largely symbolic date has become the major French patriotic holiday.
1798 - Congress passed the Sedition Act, making it a federal crime to publish false, scandalous or malicious writing about the U.S. government.
http://www.constitution.org/rf/sedition_1798.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It was one of the lowest points of early American history. If this law were in effect today, hundreds of columnists and talking heads would be in prison.
1881 - Sheriff Pat Garrett fatally shot the man best known as Billy the Kid, in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_the_Kid" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
1914 - Robert Goddard patented a liquid-fuel rocket engine, decades before practical models flew.
1921 - Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted in Massachusetts, of killing a shoe company paymaster and his guard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacco_and_Vanzetti" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Italian anarchists were the foreign terrorists of the era.
1965 - Mariner 4 transmitted the first photos of the surface of Mars taken at close range.
Science fiction fans wept.
1966 - Richard Speck murdered eight student nurses living in a townhouse in Chicago. One woman hid under a bed and lived to be a witness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Speck" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
- Jim