This Day in History – July 14
Today is the 195th day of 2022. There are 170 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1789: Citizens of Paris storm and capture the Bastille prison and release prisoners, marking start of French Revolution. Now the French national day.
OTHER EVENTS
1790: France’s King Louis XVI accepts the revolutionary constitution.
1881: William H Bonney, known as “Billy the Kid” and the reputed killer of 27 men, is shot dead at age 21 by Sheriff Pat Garrett in New Mexico.
1886: Britain and Germany agree on frontiers of Gold Coast and Togoland in Africa.
1900: International expedition, including United States and Japan, takes Tientsin, now Tianjin, in China.
1933: German political parties, other than Nazis, are suppressed, and a law is passed that provides for the sterilisation of two million people deemed unfit for reproduction.
1934: Oil pipeline between Mosul, Iraq, and Tripoli, Lebanon, is opened.
1958: The army of Iraq overthrows the monarchy. Iraq’s King Feisal and Premier Nuri-Es-Said are assassinated in Baghdad coup, and King Hussein assumes power as head of Arab Federation.
1960: The government in what is now Kinshasa, Congo, severs relations with Belgium.
1967: UN General Assembly adopts resolution asking Israel to halt action it was taking to alter city of Jerusalem after Six-Day War.
1988: Iran, at the United Nations, accuses the United States of committing a “barbaric crime” in shooting down Iranian commercial airliner.
1993: Somali militiamen fire on UN headquarters in a new wave of assaults hours after Somali militants distribute leaflets calling for revenge attacks on American soldiers.
1997: Regional legislators elect K R Narayanan as India’s first president from an “untouchable” caste.
2001: Leaders of India and Pakistan meet for the first time in two years after the nations came close to fighting a war in the disputed Kashmir province, but talks between the two nuclear-armed neighbours fail.
2002: A gunman with links to neo-Nazi groups fires one shot at French President Jacques Chirac as the president rides in an open jeep in the annual Bastille Day military parade in Paris.
2004: The much-awaited report from an official British inquiry into pre-war intelligence on Iraq criticises Prime Minister Tony Blair but finds no deliberate distortions.
2007: The Los Angeles archdiocese reaches a $660-million settlement with more than 500 alleged victims of clergy sex abuse.
2014: Egypt presents a ceasefire plan to end a week of heavy fighting between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Woody Guthrie, US singer and songwriter (1912-1967); Gerald Ford, US president (1913-2006); Ingmar Bergman, Swedish film director (1918-2007); Victoria, crown princess of Sweden (1977- ); Polly Bergen, US actress/singer (1930-2014); Roosevelt “Rosy” Grier, former US football player/actor (1932- )
— AP