1. 1963: The Famous Alcatraz Prison Closes its Doors.
PHOTO: DailyMail
PHOTO: USnews
A small 12 acre island off about a mile and a half off the coast of San Francisco sits one of the most famous prisons of all time. Known by some as “The Rock” or “Americas Devil’s Island” but most commonly as Alcatraz. This prison was at its peak in the 1950’s and due to the fact that it was on an island over a mile away from land it was felt to be escape proof and therefore held some of the most heinous criminals of the time such as AL Capone and Machine Gun Kelly. The Famous Prison closed its doors on this day back in 1963 but was later added into the Golden Gate State park in 1971 and is now open for tourism.
2. 1980: President Carter Announces Boycott of Olympic Games to Athletes
PHOTO: TheNation
PHOTO: Nytimes
On this day back in 1980 President Jimmy Carter announced to a group of athletes that the Americans would be boycotting the Olympics scheduled to start later that year in Moscow. This must have been a crushing blow to the athletes that had been training for their entire lives to have a chance at competing at an Olympic level. The Boycott was highly controversial even though the president was boycotting the games to try and influence the Soviet Union to withdraw its military from Afghanistan Carter was able to get a few countries on board with the boycott but was unable to get enough for it to make a difference. Over 80 countries still attended the Moscow Games of 1980 and 36 new world records were set.
3. 1960: Formula One Legend Ayrton Senna is born
PHOTO: wiki
On this day back in 1960 the three time Formula One Champion Ayrton Senna da Silva was born in Sao Paulo Brazil. Ayrton immediately took to kart racing as a kid and continued on that path until he was able to get behind the wheel of a F1 car in 1984 at the young age of 24. He was on top of the world for the next ten years, he won the championship in 1988, 1990 and 1991 and was one of the highest paid athletes in the world at the time with an estimated net worth of over $400 million. At the Italian Grand Prix in 1994 millions of people watched the live broadcast as Aryton’s brilliant career came to an abrupt halt as he had a small mechanical failure as he was going around a high speed corner and he hit a cement wall killing him on impact. His death happened just one day after Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger was killed in crash om his qualifying laps.