This day in history
today is Monday, July 15, the 197th day of 2024. there are 169 days left in the year.
birthdays: Actor patrick wayne is 85. r&b singer Millie Jackson is 80. singer Linda ronstadt is 78. Arianna huffington, co-founder of the huffington post, is 74. Former professional wrestler and former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura is 73. rock drummer Marky ramone is 72. rock musician Joe satriani is 68. Actor willie Aames is 64. Actor-director Forest whitaker is 63. Actor brigitte Nielsen is 61. rock drummer Jason bonham is 58. Actor Diane kruger is 48. Actor iain Armitage is 16.
➤ In 1799, the rosetta stone, a key to deciphering ancient egyptian scripts, was found at Fort Julien in the Nile Delta during the Napoleonic campaign in egypt.
➤ In 1834, the spanish inquisition was abolished more than 350 years after its creation.
➤ In 1870, Georgia became the last confederate state to be readmitted to the Union.
➤ In 1913, Democrat Augustus bacon of Georgia became the first person elected to the Us senate under the terms of the recently ratified 17th Amendment to the Us constitution, providing for popular election of senators.
➤ In 1975, three American astronauts blasted off aboard an Apollo spaceship hours after two soviet cosmonauts were launched aboard a soyuz spacecraft for a mission that included a linkup of the two ships in orbit.
➤ In 1976, a 36-hour kidnap ordeal began for 26 schoolchildren and their bus driver as they were abducted near chowchilla, calif., by three gunmen and imprisoned in an underground cell. (the captives escaped unharmed; the kidnappers were caught.)
➤ In 1996, Msnbc, a 24-hour all-news network, made its debut on cable and the internet.
➤ In 1997, fashion designer Gianni Versace, 50, was shot dead outside his Miami beach home; suspected gunman Andrew phillip cunanan, 27, was found dead eight days later, a suicide. (investigators believed cunanan killed four other people before Versace in a crosscountry rampage.)
➤ In 2002, John walker Lindh, an American who’d fought alongside the taliban in Afghanistan, pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, to two felonies in a deal sparing him life in prison.
➤ In 2006, twitter (now known as X) was launched to the public.
➤ In 2019, avowed white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. was sentenced to life in prison plus 419 years for killing one and injuring dozens of others when he deliberately drove his car into a crowd of antiracism protesters during a rally in charlottesville, Va.
➤ In 2020, George Floyd’s family filed a lawsuit against the city of Minneapolis and the four police officers charged in his death, alleging the officers violated Floyd’s rights when they restrained him and that the city allowed a culture of excessive force, racism and impunity to flourish in its police force. (the city would agree to pay $27 million to settle the lawsuit in March 2021.)