On July 14, 1789, igniting the French Revolution, Parisians stormed the Bastille prison and released seven inmates.
In 1798 Congress passed the Sedition Act, making it a federal crime to publish false, scandalous or malicious writings about the U.S. government, or to write criticisms of Congress or the president.
In 1862 painter Gustav Klimt was born in Vienna.
In 1881 William Bonney Jr., alias Billy the Kid, was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Ft. Sumner, N.M.
In 1904 writer Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in Radzymin, Poland.
In 1912 Woody Guthrie was born in Okemah, Okla.
In 1913 Gerald Ford, later the nation’s 38th president, was born in Omaha.
In 1918 director Ingmar Bergman was born in Uppsala, Sweden.
In 1921 Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted in Dedham, Mass., of killing a shoe company paymaster and his guard. (Sacco and Vanzetti were executed six years later.)
In 1933 Germany banned all political parties except the Nazi Party.
In 1958 Iraq’s King Faisal II, his entire household and his prime minister were killed in a coup by army officers.
In 1965 Adlai Stevenson II, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, former Democratic presidential candidate and an ex-Illinois governor, died in London; he was 65.
In 1966 eight student nurses were killed in their South Side dormitory by Richard Speck.
