On July 13, 1787, Congress enacts the Northwest Ordinance, structuring settlement of the Northwest Territory and creating a policy for the addition of new states to the nation. The members of Congress knew that if their new confederation were to survive intact, it had to resolve the states’ competing claims to western territory. In 1781, […]

The draft riots begin in New York City in response to the Enrollment Act, which was enacted on March 3, 1863. Although avoiding military service became much more difficult, wealthier citizens could still pay a commutation fee of $300 to stay at home. Irritation with the draft dovetailed with opposition to the Emancipation Proclamation of […]

On July 13, 1949, the Vatican releases its “Decree Against Communism” to the public. The Cold War-era edict, issued by Pope Pius XII on July 1, excommunicates all communist Catholics. As head of the Roman Catholic church through most of World War II and the first decade of the Cold War—and a fervent anti-Communist—Pius XII […]

On July 13, 1955, nightclub owner Ruth Ellis is executed by hanging for the crime of murdering her boyfriend David Blakely. Ellis was the last woman in Great Britain to be put to death. Ellis was born in Rhyl, Wales, in 1926. She left school as a young teenager, had a child and worked a […]

On the night of July 13, 1966, eight student nurses are brutally murdered by Richard Speck at their group residence in Chicago, Illinois. Speck threatened the women with both a gun and a knife, tying each of them up while robbing their townhouse. Over the next several hours, Speck stabbed and strangled each of the […]

On July 13, 1978, Ford Motor Company chairman Henry Ford II fires Lee Iacocca as Ford’s president, ending years of tension between the two men. Born to an immigrant family in Pennsylvania in 1924, Iacocca was hired by Ford as an engineer in 1946 but soon switched to sales, at which he clearly excelled. By […]

On July 13, 1985, at Wembley Stadium in London, Prince Charles and Princess Diana officially open Live Aid, a worldwide rock concert organized to raise money for the relief of famine-stricken Africans. Continued at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia (where Joan Baez famously kicked it off by telling the crowd “this is your Woodstock, and it’s […]

On July 10, 2015, Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia pulls over a 28-year-old Black woman, Sandra Bland, for failing to signal a lane change. After a heated encounter, he arrests her and takes her to a nearby jail. Three days later, on the morning of July 13, she is found dead in her cell, apparently […]