Moments in Time: Pancho Villa
The History Channel
On July 14, 1953, the George Washington Carver National Monument, founded by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and created by Audrey Corwin in 1952, was dedicated in Missouri. It was the first such site to honor a Black American as well as a non-president.
On July 15, 1997, while on a killing spree, Andrew Cunanan murdered world-renowned Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace with two gunshots to the head on the steps outside Versace's Miami mansion before fleeing the scene. Eight days later, he was discovered dead by suicide on a houseboat 40 blocks from the designer's home.
On July 16, 1769, Father Junipero Serra, a Spanish Franciscan missionary, founded the first Catholic mission in California in what is present-day San Diego. After blessing his new outpost in a high mass, the Royal Standard of Spain was unfurled over the mission, which Serra christened San Diego de Alcala.
On July 17, 1945, President Harry S. Truman recorded his initial impression of Joseph Stalin in his diary, describing their first meeting, a discussion of post-World War II policy in Europe, as "cordial" and closing the entry with the words, "I can deal with Stalin. He is honest, but smart as hell."
On July 18, 1986, new close-up videotapes of the sunken ocean liner Titanic, taken from the first manned expedition to the wreck and showing one of the ship's grand staircases and a coral-covered chandelier, were released to the public.
On July 19, 1952, air traffic controllers in Washington, D.C., detected UFOs over the White House and U.S. Capitol building. More appeared a week later, but the government dismissed the sightings as just a harmless weather phenomenon.
On July 20, 1923, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa died in a storm of 40 bullets while driving through Parral, Mexico. He was buried the next day, but three years later the grave was dug up and his skull was stolen. Officially, the identity of the robber remains a mystery, as does that of the person who ordered the assassination.