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19891776 Club

Robert Bardo shoots Rebecca Schaeffer at her door; she dies at Cedars-Sinai at 21

Bardo, 19, had stalked her for three years and paid a detective $250 to pull her home address from California DMV records.

Rebecca Schaeffer, 21, lived alone in West Hollywood and was preparing for an audition with Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather Part III. That morning, July 18, 1989, a 19-year-old named Robert Bardo knocked on her door, then returned an hour later after having breakfast at a nearby diner. He had stalked her for three years and had paid a detective agency $250 to pull her address from California DMV records. He shot her once in the chest at 10:15 am. She died thirty minutes later at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center…

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More from July 18
1966

Young and Collins ride Agena's engine to 412 nautical miles; no human has flown higher

Gemini 10 docks with its target vehicle hours after liftoff from Cape Kennedy, with Collins set to walk outside and retrieve hardware from a second Agena still drifting in orbit.
1863

Shaw is killed at the parapet; the 54th Massachusetts storms Fort Wagner

One of the first Black regiments in the Union Army leads the beach assault on Charleston harbor's fort, suffering heavy losses but silencing doubts about whether these soldiers will fight.
1914

Congress creates an aviation section inside the Signal Corps; $250,000 to get it started

Public Law 143 gives the Army's handful of planes a formal home, but keeps aviation folded inside the Signal Corps rather than making it a branch of its own.
19681776 Club
Backed by Arthur Rock and registered today as NM Electronics, the new venture already has a third man: chemical engineer Andy Grove, employee number three.
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Read the full July 18 edition →Everything that happened on July 18 →
More from Cold War America
1979

Carter tells the nation it suffers a 'crisis of confidence'; he never says the word malaise

With gas lines stretching for hours and inflation gnawing at paychecks, the President goes on live television to diagnose a mood, not announce a fix.
1969

Saturn V lifts Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin off the pad; Apollo 11 is bound for the Sea of Tranquility

Kennedy's eight-year-old promise has a crew and a launch date; the rocket cleared the tower at Kennedy Space Center this morning.
1975

Stafford and Leonov shake hands through an open hatch; American and Soviet spacecraft dock in orbit

Soyuz 19 and the last Apollo ever built linked up at 16:19 UTC, two days after lifting off from opposite sides of the world.
1960

From out of the deep to target, perfect: Polaris fires from a submerged submarine

A second missile follows within two hours, both striking 1,100 miles downrange off Florida.
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