(FOX NEWS) – Retired Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor,
the first woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, has died. 

The high court said O’Connor died Friday morning in Phoenix
of complications related to advanced dementia, probably
Alzheimer’s, and a respiratory illness.

O’Connor is sworn in by Chief Justice Warren Burger as
her husband John O’Connor looks on.

John Jay (December 23, 1745 – May 17, 1829)

(FOX NEWS) – Founding Father John Jay, a towering figure
among the intellectual giants who forged the nation, was
sworn in as first chief justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States on this day in history, Oct. 19, 1789. 

The New York native held the title until resigning in 1795,
among the shortest tenures for the prestigious lifetime
appointment.

Only 16 other people have held the title of Supreme Court
chief justice in the 227 years since.

On the night of May 14, 1829, Jay was stricken with palsy,
probably caused by a stroke. He lived for three more days,
dying in Bedford, New York.

Jay’s childhood home in Rye, New York is a New York
State Historic Site and Westchester County Park.

Jay’s retirement home near Katonah, New York.

On September 2, 1967, Chief Justice Earl Warren swore
in Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice of the U.S.
Supreme Court.

As chief counsel for the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1940s 
and ’50s, Marshall was the architect and executor of
legal strategy that ended the era of official racial
segregation 

                                       
                                          Thurgood Marshall (1908 – 1993)       
      
                                                                                                                                      

Muhammad Ali, the reigning world heavyweight boxing champion, entered the combative ring of politics and culture by refusing to
serve in the United States military at the height of the Vietnam
War on this day in 1967.

"I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong," Ali famously said the
year before, the exact quote the source of some dispute, in a
battle that made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court. 

He later wrote, "I refuse to be inducted into the Armed Forces
of the United States because I claim to be exempt as a minister
of the religion of Islam."

ROSS SIMPSON

John Adam Belushi (January 24, 1949 – March 5, 1982)

Comedian, actor, and musician John Belushi was one
of the seven original cast members of the NBC sketch
comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL) that premiered
October 11, 1975.

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