This Day in History: July 15

On this day, July 15 …

1997: Fashion designer Gianni Versace, 50, is shot dead outside his Miami Beach home; suspected gunman Andrew Phillip Cunanan, 27, is found dead eight days later, from a suicide. (Investigators believe Cunanan killed four other people before Versace in a cross-country spree that began in April.)

Also on this day:

• 1799: French soldiers in Egypt discover the Rosetta Stone, which proves instrumental in deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
• 1910: The term "Alzheimer's disease" is used to describe a progressive form of pre-senile dementia in the book "Clinical Psychiatry" by German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, who credited the work of his colleague, Alois Alzheimer, in identifying the condition.
• 1971: President Richard Nixon delivers a televised address in which he announces that he had accepted an invitation to visit the People's Republic of China.

• 1985: A gaunt-looking Rock Hudson appears at a news conference with actress Doris Day. (It would be later revealed Hudson was suffering from AIDS).
• 1996: MSNBC, a 24-hour all-news network, makes its debut on cable and the internet.

• 2002: John Walker Lindh, an American who fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan, pleads guilty in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to two felonies, sparing him life in prison.
• 2008: In an All-Star game that begins at dusk and ends at 1:37 a.m. the next morning, the American League defeats the National League 4-3 in 15 innings at Yankee Stadium.
• 2010: After 85 days, BP stops the flow of oil from a blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico using a 75-ton cap lowered onto the wellhead earlier in the week.