Today in History, July 14, 1789: Paris citizens stormed the Bastille prison during French Revolution

Today is July 14. On this date:

1789

In an event symbolizing the start of the French Revolution, citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille prison and released the seven prisoners inside.

1798

President John Adams approved the U.S. Sedition Act, which made it illegal for anyone to express “any false, scandalous and malicious writing” against Congress or the president. (The act expired in 1800 after Thomas Jefferson was elected president.)

1875

Price Hill Incline Railroad opened.

1881

Outlaw William H. Bonney Jr., alias “Billy the Kid,” was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner in present-day New Mexico.

1912

American folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie (”This Land Is Your Land”) was born in Okemah, Okla.

1933

All German political parties, except the Nazi Party, were outlawed.

1966

Chicago awoke to news that eight student nurses had been brutally slain during the night in a South Side dormitory. Drifter Richard Speck was convicted of the mass killing and condemned to death; he died in prison in 1991.

1976

Jimmy Carter won the Democratic presidential nomination at the party’s convention in New York.

1980

The Republican national convention opened in Detroit, where nominee-apparent Ronald Reagan told a welcoming rally he and his supporters were determined to “make America great again.”

1999

Race-based school busing in Boston came to an end after 25 years.

2003

Newspaper columnist Robert Novak publicly revealed the CIA employment of Valerie Plame, wife of Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador in Africa who said the administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq.

2013

Thousands of demonstrators across the country protested a Florida jury’s decision the day before to clear George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

2016

Terror struck Bastille Day celebrations in the French Riviera city of Nice as a large truck plowed into a festive crowd, killing 86 people in an attack claimed by Islamic State extremists; the driver was shot dead by police.