This Day in History: July 14

On this day, July 14 ...

1980: The Republican National Convention opens in Detroit, where presumptive nominee Ronald Reagan tells a welcoming rally he and his supporters are determined to "make America great again."

Also on this day: 

• 1789: In an event symbolizing the start of the French Revolution, citizens of Paris storm the Bastille prison and release the seven prisoners inside.
• 1798: U.S. Congress passes the Sedition Act, making it a federal crime to publish false, scandalous or malicious writing about the United States government.
• 1912: American folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie ("This Land Is Your Land") is born in Okemah, Oklahoma.
• 1921: Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are convicted in Dedham, Massachusetts, of murdering a shoe company paymaster and his guard. (Sacco and Vanzetti would be executed six years later.)

• 1976: Jimmy Carter wins the Democratic presidential nomination at the party's convention in New York.
• 2003: Newspaper columnist Robert Novak publicly reveals 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 protest a Florida jury’s decision to clear George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

• 2016: Terror strikes Bastille Day celebrations in the French Riviera city of Nice as a large truck plows into a festive crowd, killing 86 people in an attack claimed by Islamic State extremists; the driver is shot dead by police.
• 2019: President Trump squares off with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and progressive freshman congresswomen on Twitter, telling the new lawmakers to "go back" to their countries of origin to fix the corruption plaguing those nations before they lecture the United States.