16 places that shaped the 2016 election: Baton Rouge, La.

By Nov. 9, the votes will have been cast and counted, there will be a winner and a loser, and the country will begin a slow return to normal. Historians will have their say on the outcome, but all of us who have lived through this election will carry away indelible memories of a shocking year in American history: of a handful of ordinary people, swept up in the rush of history; of a series of moments on which the fate of the nation seemed, at least briefly, to turn; and of places on the map that became symbols of a divided nation. As we count down to Election Day, Yahoo News has identified 16 unforgettable people, moments and places.

It started, as these things so often do, with a call to police about a man with a gun. The man was Alton Sterling, 37, who was peddling CDs outside a Baton Rouge, La., convenience store on July 5 when, according to media accounts, he brushed off a panhandler, who then called 911 to say Sterling had threatened him.

You already know what happened, because it was captured on a particularly graphic cellphone video. Two cops responded, there was a scuffle in which Sterling was knocked to the ground and six shots were fired, killing him.

Hillary Clinton called the shooting a “tragedy,” and said it showed that “something is profoundly wrong” in the country.

Sterling’s death came one day before Philandro Castile, 32, was stopped for a broken taillight while driving in a suburb of St. Paul, Minn., with his fiancée, Diamond Reynolds, in the passenger seat, and her 4-year-old daughter in the back. You already know what happened next, because the aftermath was live-streamed on Facebook: Castile, who, by Reynolds’ account, informed the officer he was (legally) armed, wound up being shot to death.

Donald Trump called the Sterling and Castile killings “a terrible, disgusting performance that I saw.” Asked by Bill O’Reilly if they were symptoms “of a larger problem with American police” he responded, “Look, it could be.”

Castile was shot was one day before Micah Johnson, 25, took a rifle to a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Dallas and began picking off the police who were guarding the marchers, shooting five of them dead and wounding a civilian, before he was killed in a standoff with authorities using a remote-controlled robot carrying a bomb.

In an interview with CNN, Mrs. Clinton praised the Dallas officers and called the attack “an absolutely horrific event.”

That was a week and a half before Gavin Long, 29, took a walk down a Baton Rouge highway, armed with a rifle, and began shooting at officers when they showed up to investigate, killing three and wounding three others before he was shot and killed by a police sniper.

Donald Trump decided this was an occasion to attack Clinton, proclaiming himself “the law-and-order candidate” contrasted to his “weak, ineffective, pandering” opponent.

That was two months before Terence Crutcher was shot dead by a Tulsa, Okla., policewoman as he was walking toward his car which had been stopped in the middle of the road, which was four days before Keith Lamont Scott was shot and killed by officers in the parking lot outside his apartment in Charlotte, N.C., leading to several nights of angry protests in which a civilian was killed.

Trump described the killing of Crutcher as “very troubling,” and Clinton called the situation “unbearable and needs to become intolerable.”

That was a week before Alfred Olango, 38, who was said to be acting erratically, was shot to death after he pulled an electronic cigarette from his pocket and pointed it at officers in El Cajon, Calif. — By Jerry Adler

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