Woodstock ’99 begins

On July 23, 1885, just after completing his memoirs, Civil War hero and former president Ulysses S. Grant dies of throat cancer.

At six o’clock in the evening on July 23, 1914, nearly one month after the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife by a young Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia, Baron Giesl von Gieslingen, ambassador of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Serbia, delivers an ultimatum to the Serbian foreign ministry.

Della Sorenson kills the first of her seven victims in rural Nebraska by poisoning her sister-in-law’s infant daughter, Viola Cooper. Over the next seven years, friends, relatives, and acquaintances of Sorenson died under mysterious circumstances before anyone finally realized that it had to be more than a coincidence.

John Herbert Dillinger joins the Navy in order to avoid charges of auto theft in Indiana, marking the beginning of America’s most notorious criminal’s downfall. Years later, Dillinger’s reputation was forged in a single 12-month period, during which he robbed more banks than Jesse James did in 15 years and became the most wanted fugitive in the nation.

In Egypt, the Society of Free Officers seizes control of the government in a military coup d’etat staged by Colonel Gamal Abdal Nasser’s Free Officers. King Farouk, whose rule had been criticized for its corruption and failures in the first Arab-Israeli war, was forced to abdicate and relinquish power to General Muhammad Naguib, the figurehead leader of the coup.

The 1967 Detroit Riots were among the bloodiest in American history. The strife occurred during a period of Detroit’s history when the once-affluent city was struggling economically, and race relations nationwide were at an all-time low.

On July 23, 1982, Vic Morrow and two child actors, Renee Shinn Chen and Myca Dinh Le, are killed in an accident involving a helicopter during filming on the California set of Twilight Zone: The Movie. Morrow, age 53, and the children, ages six and seven, were shooting a Vietnam War battle scene in which they were supposed to be running from a pursuing helicopter. Special-effects explosions on the set caused the pilot of the low-flying craft to lose control and crash into the three victims. The accident took place on the film’s last scheduled day of shooting.

On July 23, 1984, 21-year-old Vanessa Williams gives up her Miss America title, the first resignation in the pageant’s history, after Penthouse magazine announces plans to publish nude photos of the beauty queen in its September issue. Williams originally made history on September 17, 1983, when she became the first Black woman to win the Miss America crown. Miss New Jersey, Suzette Charles, the first runner-up and also African American, assumed Williams’ tiara for the two months that remained of her reign.

On July 23, 1988, the band Guns N’ Roses made its big popular breakthrough when their first hit single, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” entered the Billboard Top 40.

On July 23, 1996, at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, the U.S. women’s gymnastics team wins its first-ever team gold.

The music festival Woodstock ’99 opens on July 23, 1999. The festival—timed to the 30th anniversary of the original Woodstock—attempts to bring the spirit of peace, music, and love to a new generation; instead it devolves into three days of scorching heat, raw sewage, misogyny and greed in upstate New York.