On August 24, 1981, Mark David Chapman was sentenced to 20 years to
life for the murder of John Lennon, a founding member of The Beatles.

On December 8, 1980, Chapman shot and killed the 40-year-old singer,
songwriter, outside Lennon’s New York City apartment building, the
Dakota, where he lived with his wife Yoko Ono and their young son
Sean.

John Lennon signs an autograph for Mark Chapman (right) – his murderer. December 8, 1980.

Mark David Chapman turned 64 in May.

Chapman’s requests for parole have all been
denied and he continues to serve time in a 
New York prison.

The first race was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, now the home of
the world’s most famous motor racing competition, the Indianapolis 500.

Built on 328 acres of farmland five miles northwest of Indianapolis, Indiana,
the speedway was started by local businessmen as a testing facility for
Indiana’s growing automobile industry. The idea was that occasional races
at the track would pit cars from different manufacturers against each other
and after seeing what these cars could do, spectators would presumably
head down to the showroom of their choice to get a closer look.

The rectangular two-and-a-half-mile track linked four turns, each exactly 440
yards from start to finish, by two long and two short straight sections. In that
first five-mile race on August 19, 1909, 12,000 spectators watched Austrian
engineer Louis Schwitzer win with an average speed of 57.4 miles per hour.

 
Louis Schwitzer (1880 – 1967) winner of the inaugural
race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.        

Police officials surround David Berkowitz, 24, of Yonkers outside Brooklyn’s 84th Precinct after his arrest as the "Son of Sam" killer.

On August 10, 1977, 24-year-old postal employee David Berkowitz is arrested
and charged with being the “Son of Sam,” the serial killer who terrorized New
York City for more than a year, killing six young people and wounding seven
others with a .44-caliber revolver. Because Berkowitz generally targeted
attractive young women with long brown hair, hundreds of young women
had their hair cut short and dyed blonde during the time he terrorized the
city. Thousands more simply stayed home at night.

After his arrest, Berkowitz claimed that demons and a black Labrador
retriever owned by a neighbor named Sam had ordered him to commit
the killings.

David Richard Berkowitz turned 66 on June 1.

Berkowitz now says he is a born-again Christian and is "very
sorry for what happened."

In an evening televised address, President Richard M. Nixon announces
his intention to become the first president in American history to resign.

With impeachment proceedings underway against him for his involvement
in the Watergate affair, Nixon was finally bowing to pressure from the public
and Congress to leave the White House. 

“By taking this action,” he said in a solemn address from the Oval Office,
“I hope that I will have hastened the start of the process of healing which
is so desperately needed in America.”

Just before noon the next day, Nixon officially ended his term as the 37th
president of the United States.

Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jeane Mortenson)
(June 1, 1926 – August 4, 1962