On this date in 1976, Kentucky became the 49th state to ratify The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which abolished slavery 111 years after it was ratified nationally by the necessary three-fourths of the states.

Joseph Eli Bearden, 21, and William David Brown, Jr., 20, were charged on this date in 2007 for the death of Ryan Keith Skipper, a gay man who was stabbed 20 times. Robbed of his computer prior to his murder, Mr. Skipper's body was found on the side of a dirt road in Wahneta, Florida. Arrested two days prior to their being charged, Bearden and Brown, the police allege, killed Mr. Skipper inside his car on March 14, 2007, then attempted to clean the car which was found abandoned on a dock near Lake Pansy in Winter Haven, Florida. Brown is alleged to have told someone that Mr. Skipper was killed because he was gay and had made sexual advances toward Brown and Bearden. On February 27, 2009, Bearden, 23, was sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder, plus forty years for theft of a motor vehicle, accessory after the fact with a weapon, tampering with evidence and dealing in stolen property. On November 3, 2009, a jury convicted William Brown, Jr., of first-degree murder and robbery with a deadly weapon for killing and robbing Mr. Skipper, after having pleaded guilty in late October, 2009, to charges of arson and tampering with evidence. On December 1, 2009, Brown was sentenced to two life terms in prison.

On this date in 2008 in Brooklyn, New York, near the Fourth Avenue-Ninth Street subway station in Park Slope, an Israeli rabbinical assistant living in Wellesley, Massachusetts, was attacked by a group of Arab youths, one of whom is said to have stolen the victim’s yarmulke from his head and then to have run into traffic with it where he was struck by a car and broke his leg. That youth was arrested for his alleged role in the attack on Uria Ohana, 25, originally from Kfar Chabad, who was on his way to attend a lecture in Manhattan when the group of youths began kicking and punching Mr. Ohana and shouting “Allah akbar” (translated: “Allah is the greatest”) after he chased the youth who had grabbed his yarmulke. The incident is being investigated as a likely hate crime said a New York Police Department spokeswoman.

At a strip mall in Stockton, Missouri, on this date in 2009, arson destroyed three businesses—Movie Land, Pappi's Pizza and the Cig Shack—all owned by an openly gay man, Dan Thornton, 38, of El Dorado, Missouri, in what appeared to be an apparent hate crime. Anti-gay graffiti was found painted at the scene of the arson. The following day (March 19) Dina R. Larson, 39, and her son, Jacob T. Smith, 18, both of Stockton, were charged second-degree burglary and second-degree arson. Cedar County law enforcement then charged Thornton with second-degree arson and theft. He stands accused of planning the arsons, said to have been carried out by Larson and Smith, as a scheme to collect $900,000 in insurance money for his businesses which he had tried unsuccessfully to sell for about 18 months before the arson.