Today in History: July 14

1789: A Paris mob storms the old Bastille prison, freeing all seven prisoners—four forgers, two lunatics, and a “deviant aristocrat”—and seizing large stores of arms and powder.

1798: The U.S. Congress passes the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts. They will all expire or be repealed by 1802.

1881: Twenty-one year-old Henry McCarty, a/k/a William Bonney, a/k/a Billy the Kid, is shot to death by Sheriff Pat Garrett at Old Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

1913: U.S. President Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. (Yale Law 1941) is born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., at Omaha, Nebraska.

1938: Future Yippie leader and Chicago Seven defendant Jerry Rubin is born at Cincinnati, Ohio. He’ll later go on to become a successful Wall Street marketing analyst and venture capitalist.

1958: Military officers stage a coup that overthrows the Iraqi monarchy, killing several members of the royal family and the prime minister.

1965: Two-time Presidential candidate Adlai Ewing Stevenson II (Northwestern Law 1926) dies at London, England.

1966: Richard Speck rapes and kills eight student nurses in a townhouse in South Chicago, Illinois. Asked later about their deaths, he’ll remark, “It just wasn’t their night.”

1984: Auckland lawyer David Lange becomes the 32nd Prime Minister of New Zealand.

1998: Richard “Dick” McDonald, who cooked the first McDonald’s hamburger ever served, dies at Manchester, New Hampshire. In 1984 he also cooked the ceremonial 50 billionth burger.