Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is July 14. The French Revolution began on this date in 1789 when a mob stormed the Bastille prison in Paris, freeing some prisoners and killing some defenders. The event -- which forced King Louis XVI to sign a new constitution, guaranteeing certain human rights --is now celebrated as a national holiday in France known as "Bastille Day." Advertisement Four years later, in 1793, Jean Paul Marat, one of the most outspoken leaders of the French Revolution, is stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday, a Royalist sympathizer. The German government, on this date in 1933, officially suppressed all political parties except the Nazis. Robert Goddard was granted the first patent for a liquid-fueled rocket design on this date in 1914. Terror gripped Chicago on this date in 1966 when eight student nurses were found brutally slain in a townhouse on the city's South Side. A ninth woman had escaped by hiding under a bed. A drifter, Richard Speck, was later was convicted in the killings. On this date in 1998, moving into uncharted waters, independent counsel Kenneth Starr subpoenaed a number of Secret Service agents to testify before a grand jury investigating President Clinton's alleged affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky Advertisement And on this date in 1999, the European Union ended its 3-year ban on British beef imports. The ban had been prompted by fears of meat being contaminated with "mad cow disease." We now return you to the present, already in progress.
