AARP Eye Center
This Week in Boomer History: Miranda Warning ... Live Aid ... NYC Blackout
By Steve Mencher, July 6, 2014 02:00 AM
Notable events from our shared experience 
Gloria Steinem delivers an " Address to the Women of America," considered by many one of the century's great speeches, on July 10, 1971. In it, she says: "Sex and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups, and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen, or those earned. We are really talking about humanism."
Launched on July 10, 1962, Telstar 1 ushers in the satellite communication era when it relays the first television pictures, telephone calls and fax images through space.
>> Get travel discounts with your AARP Member Advantages.
President Ronald Reagan appoints Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first woman justice to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court on July 7, 1981.
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is published July 11, 1960. To date, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book is Lee's only published novel.
"You have the right to remain silent" becomes a staple of police interrogations and TV drama after the Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona on June 13, 1966. Ernesto Miranda is retried, convicted of kidnapping, rape and armed robbery and sentenced to serve 20 to 30 years. Paroled in 1972, he makes a modest living autographing police "Miranda cards" before being stabbed to death in a bar in 1976.
A blackout in New York City starts on the evening of July 13, 1977, and lasts about 24 hours. The toll, according to the New York Times: 1,000 reported fires, 1,600 stores damaged in looting and rioting, and 3,700 arrests at an estimated cost of $300 million. The event comes to symbolize all that is wrong with American cities.
>> Sign up for the AARP Health Newsletter
Paul McCartney, Queen, U2, the Who and David Bowie are among the stars of Live Aid, a benefit concert for Ethiopian famine relief on July 13, 1985. About 164,000 people attend in London's Wembley Stadium and Philadelphia's John F. Kennedy Stadium, and more than 1.5 billion in more than 100 countries are estimated to have watched on TV.
Visit Boomers, the Generation That Changed the World from AARP. 
Visit and contribute to our Boomer Tumblr.
Let us read This Week in Boomer History to you:
[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/157158633" params="color=00aabb&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]
Images - Gloria Steinem, 1972: from U.S. News and World Report Collection, Library of Congress/Wikipedia; David Bowie: Georges De Keerle/Getty Images
Music - Test Drive: Zapac via ccMixter
Also of Interest
- This Week in Boomer History: Remember the Bicentennial?
- The Night Grace Kelly Surprised JFK in His Room
- Fight fraud and ID theft with the AARP Fraud Watch Network.
- Join AARP: Savings, resources and news for your well-being
See the AARP home page for deals, savings tips, trivia and more