That was at one time my password for my important shit. Long before password managers, I got sick of typing it.
On July 14, 1881, Sheriff Pat Garrett shoots Henry McCarty, popularly known as Billy the Kid, to death at the Maxwell Ranch in New Mexico. Garrett, who had been tracking the Kid for three months after the gunslinger had escaped from prison only days before his scheduled execution, got a tip that Billy was holed up with friends. While Billy was gone, Garrett waited in the dark in his bedroom. When Billy entered, Garrett shot him to death. Exactly one year to the day later, well-known gentleman gunfighter John Ringo is found shot to death in Turkey Creek Valley, not far from Tombstone, AZ. Ringo had been running with the Clanton Gang for months, but was absent from the Gunfight at the OK Corral 2 years earlier. He had been shot through the head and his death ruled a suicide, though historians believe he could have been killed in a shootout with any one of three known rivals, including Wyatt Earp, who claimed to have killed Ringo. (left: Billy the Kid, right: John Ringo) On July 14, 1789, Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops storm and capture, the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchs. The mob captures several cannon and 250 barrels of gunpowder, releases 7 prisoners and kills the fortress commander. The French Revolution is underway. On the night of July 14, 1966, alcoholic and career petty thief Richard Speck breaks into the townhouse that is the home for nursing students of the South Chicago Community Hospital. At gunpoint, Speck forces six women into a room and ties them up. By midnight, 3 more nurses have come home and been captured as well. Throughout the ordeal, Speck assured the girls he only intended to rob them, but after midnight he began bringing the victims to separate rooms one by one, where he either stabbed or strangled them. One nurse, Corazon Amurao, escaped her bindings and hid under a bed; Speck eventually lost count of his victims and Amurao would survive. Speck was captured 4 days later and sentenced to death on 8 counts of murder, but the Supreme Court would invalidate the death penalty law before his execution. Re-sentenced to 400 years in prison, Speck died in prison in 1991.
On July 15, 2016, Odeo, a podcast company out of Silicon Valley, launches its short message service app called Twittr, later changed to Twitter. Today, an average of 2 billion people per month use Twitter, 99.9999% of its monthly content is meant to smear the president. OK, I made that last part up, but this is true: among the names Odeo rejected for Twittr was FriendStalker. On July 15, 1870, Georgia is formally readmitted into the Union, after agreeing to stop resisting the seating of blacks lawfully voted into positions in the State Assembly. Georgia is the last state of the Confederacy to be readmitted. On July 15, 1834, Maria Christina, Regent of the Two Sicilies, issues a royal decree ending the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition - The Spanish Inquisition. In effect for more than 350 years, it is estimated that the Inquisition prosecuted about 150,000 people for offenses ranging from heresy to bigamy. Estimates of those executed for offenses range from 3 to 5,000. Those numbers also include an undetermined number of Jews or Muslims who refused to either convert to Christianity or leave the jurisdiction, despite the charter of the Inquisition specifying that inquisitors only had authority to investigate and prosecute Christians. "Conversions" of those found guilty were frequently coerced through torture. On July 15, 1997, renowned Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace is shot and killed on the steps of his Miami mansion. Video evidence points police to Andrew Cunanan, who was already on the FBI's radar for four murders in four states since late April. Cunanan is found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot on a houseboat not far from the Versace mansion 8 days later. He left no suicide note. Cunanan had no criminal record before his spree of murder's began, and there is no evidence that he and Versace ever met.
July 16 is loaded with history.... 1969, Apollo 11 launches, beginning the first mission that will land men on the moon. 1945, the first atomic bomb is successfully detonated in New Mexico 1790, Congress approves the site selection of a plot of land on the Potomac River as the site for a new national capitol city, designating the plot the District of Columbia and the city (only existing on paper at this point) to be named Washington. 1995, Amazon launches its online store. Books are the only item for sale on that first day. 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr, son of the former president, is killed along with his wife and sister-in-law when the plane he is piloting crashes off Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts 2002, President George W. Bush announces his plans for a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. 1779, General Anthony Wayne leads a nighttime bayonet charge of the British fort at Stony Point, NY, and captures the garrison without firing a shot, earning him the nickname "Mad Anthony". 1917, the 300-year Romanov Dynasty comes to an end in Russia with the execution of Czar Nicholas II, his wife and their 5 children. 1769, the first Catholic mission in California is dedicated at what is now San Diego. 1951, Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger's only novel is published, becoming an instant hit and a staple of required high school reading for the remainder of the 20th century.
On July 17, 1453, the French defeat the English at the Battle of Castillon, effectively ending the Hundred Years War. On July 17, 1945, President Truman, British Prime Minister Churchill and Soviet leader Stalin meet in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam. This final "Big Three" summit of World War II does little to settle differences of opinion in the administration of post-war Germany, or lessen growing suspicions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. On July 17, 1955, Disneyland opens on 160 acres in Anaheim, a suburb of Los Angeles. The $17 million venture brings a new term into the entertainment lexicon; "theme park", redefining the amusement park industry; last year Disneyland, the oldest and smallest of the Walt Disney World family of theme parks, brought in $3 billion in revenues. On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747 bound for Paris, explodes over the Atlantic moments after taking off from New York's JFK airport. All 230 aboard are killed. Rumors of a terrorist act and an accidental shootdown by the U.S. Navy fly before the NTSB concludes that the explosion resulted from a mechanical failure. On July 17, 1941, New York Yankees centerfielder Joe DiMaggio goes 0 for 4 against the Cleveland Indians, ending his 56-game hitting streak, a record that still stands to this day. LKF: had DiMaggio gotten a hit that night, the Heinz Corporation planned to pay him $10,000 for matching the "57" seen on the bottles of all its products. On July 17, 1938, Douglas Corrigan, one of the mechanics who serviced Charles Lindberg's Spirit of St. Louis before his historic 1927 flight, takes off from Brooklyn in a1929 Curtiss Robin he had rescued from a junkyard and rebuilt in California. He had flown the plane to New York in a transcontinental flight that gained press attention simply for the barely-airworthy condition of the plane. Corrigan sought permission to attempt to recreate Lindberg's New York to Paris flight, but looking at the decrepit Robin led authorities to reject his flight plan. Corrigan gets in his plane on the 17th to return to Cali, but shortly after takeoff executes a 180 degree turn. The next time anyone sees Corrigan - 28 hours later - he's landing in Dublin, Ireland, claiming to have lost his bearings in the clouds due to a compass malfunction. Quickly dubbed "Wrong Way Corrigan," he sticks to the story and gains fame, though at the cost of his pilot's license, which would be revoked by the government. (note the New York Post tribute)
On July 18, 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt is nominated to an unprecedented third term of office by the Democratic Party. The 22nd Amendment, limiting presidents to two elected terms, won't be passed until after Roosevelt's fourth election, but previous presidents have followed the example set by George Washington of stepping down after two terms. Roosevelt believed it was his duty to continue serving with the mounting crisis in Europe. On July 18, 1863, the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, one of the first all-colored regiments in the Union Army, meets disaster at Ft. Wagner, South Carolina. Chosen to lead the assault on one of the forts guarding the entrance to Charleston Harbor, the 54th suffers roughly 40% casualties, with the dead including their white commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. The survivors managed to breach the fort's defenses, but their numbers by then were too small to take the fort. In 2008, the Massachusetts National Guard re-instituted the 54th Volunteer Regiment as a ceremonial unit. On July 18, 1969, on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy hosts a party honoring 6 women who served on his brother Robert's presidential campaign the year before. At about 11pm, the married Kennedy leaves the party with one of the honorees, Mary Jo Kopechne, ostensibly to drive her back to her hotel (it was later realized Kopechne left her purse and keys at the party). On the drive, Kennedy misses the entrance ramp to a bridge and drives into a pond. He escapes the car, but is unable to rescue Kopechne. It will be 10 hours before Kennedy reports Kopechne to be missing; reports of his activities suggest he spends the time trying to establish an alibi. He would eventually plead guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, receives a suspended sentence, a suspended driver's license and another 40 years in the Senate from his constituents. Two noteworthy events in sports.... 1927....Ty Cobb records his 4,000 major league hit 1976...Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci's uneven parallel bars routine scores the first perfect 10.0 score in Olympic gymnastics history.
On July 19, 1799, a French soldier of Napoleon's Egyptian campaign discovers a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing near the town of Rosetta, about 35 miles east of Alexandria. The irregularly shaped stone contained fragments of passages written in three different scripts: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Egyptian demotic. The ancient Greek on the stone told archaeologists that the three scripts were all of identical meaning. The "Rosetta Stone" thus held the key to solving the riddle of hieroglyphics, a written language that had been “dead” for nearly 2,000 years. The British beat back the French incursion in Egypt in 1801 and took possession of the stone, moving it to the British Museum in London, where it remains to this day. On July 19, 1879, a former army scout named Mike Gordon visiting Las Vegas tries to persuade a saloon girl to quit her job and run away with him. When she refused, Gordon became infuriated. He went out on the street and began to fire bullets randomly into the saloon. One of the saloon's co-owners, a transplanted Atlanta dentist name John Henry Holliday, calmly steps out and kills Gordon with a single shot. It is the first killing by famed gentleman gunfighter "Doc" Holliday, but contrary to his legend, he will register only one more documented kill in his colorful career, in 1881 at the O.K. Corral.
