July 26, 1981 (Sunday)
- After six years, the FBI brought "Operation Donnie Brasco" to an end. Undercover agent Joseph D. Pistone had infiltrated the Bonanno crime family starting in 1975, using the alias Donnie Brasco and gathering evidence for the Bureau. When the family's boss, Dominic Napolitano, asked Pistone to carry out a hit against Bruno Indelicato, his FBI handlers decided that Pistone/Brasco would be discovered. Only after Pistone's assignment ended did FBI agents inform Napolitano that his trusted aide had been an informant. Napolitano would be killed by the Bonanno mob on August 17 for making the mistake.
- Swelled by a downpour that had happened hours earlier and far upriver, the Tanque Verde Falls in Arizona was the site of a flash flood that killed eight people without warning.
- Born: Maicon (Maicon Douglas Sisenando), Brazilian soccer football player, in Novo Hamburgo
Read more about this topic: July 1981
Famous quotes containing the word july:
“People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn’t buy vanilla ice cream. Except on July Fourth. Other days he had to be satisfied with chocolate.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)