On July 13, 1863, violent protests against the Civil War military draft erupted in New York. (In three days of rioting, about 1,000 people died.)
In 1886 Rev. Edward Flanagan, founder of Girls and Boys Town, was born near Ballymoe, County Roscommon, Ireland.
In 1942 actor Harrison Ford was born in Chicago.
In 1960 John Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination at the party’s convention in Los Angeles.
In 1977 a power blackout virtually paralyzed New York City for 25 hours.
In 1978 Lee Iacocca was fired as president of Ford Motor Co. by Chairman Henry Ford II.
In 1985, Live Aid, an international rock concert in London and Philadelphia, took place to raise money for African famine relief. Also, before his surgery for colon cancer, President Ronald Reagan transferred power temporarily to Vice President George H.W. Bush; it was the first time the Constitution’s presidential disability clause was invoked.
In 1994 Tonya Harding’s ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, was sentenced in Portland, Ore., to 2 years in prison for his role in the attack on Harding’s skating rival, Nancy Kerrigan.
In 1995 Chicago’s high temperature for the day reached 106 degrees, breaking a 61-year record and beginning the second-hottest summer in city history. (When the heat wave ended four days later, 521 Cook County deaths were blamed on the weather. A September report blamed more than 700 deaths on the heat in the city alone.)
In 1998 a jury in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., ruled that Al Sharpton had defamed a former prosecutor by accusing him of raping Tawana Bradley.
In 2001 Beijing was awarded the 2008 Olympics.
In 2003 Cuban musician Compay Segundo died in Havana; he was 95.
In 2005 former WorldCom Inc. boss Bernard Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison for leading the largest corporate fraud in U.S. history.
