On this day in 1980: The birth of Kim Kardashian

On this day, 21 October 1980, Kim Kardashian was born. Eliot Wilson traces the rise of the new form of celebrity she forged I am old enough to remember the O.J. Simpson trial of 1995, when the former football legend was accused and sensationally acquitted of murdering his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goodman. Next to Simpson sat a 51-year-old college friend, thick hair with a streak of white at his hairline brushed back, immaculate in Italian-tailored suits and expensive silk ties. He had renewed his attorney’s licence to practice to join Simpson’s “Dream Team”, as moral support for Simpson. His name was Robert Kardashian. The trial put Kardashian and his family under uncomfortable scrutiny: he had three daughters and a son but had divorced his wife in 1991. Anxious about the future, longing for reassurance, he had even visited a psychic, which sat uneasily with his religious faith; he was a Molokan, a radical Biblically-focused Armenian sect. But she was uncon