On This Day

June 8, 2011

0452 - Italy was invaded by Attila the Hun.

0632 - The prophet Mohammed died.

0793 - The Vikings raided the Northumbrian coast of England.

1783 - Iceland’s Laki volcano erupted and continued to spew lava for eight months. 9,350 people were killed and famine started and lasted until 1790.

1786 - In New York City, commercial ice cream was manufactured for the first time.

1790 - The first loan for the U.S. was repaid. The Temporary Loan of 1789 was negotiated and secured on September 18, 1789 by Alexander Hamilton.

1861 - Tennessee voted to secede from the Union and joined the Confederacy.

1866 - Prussia annexed the region of Holstein.

1869 - Ives W. McGaffey received a U.S. patent for the suction vacuum cleaner.

1872 - The penny postcard was authorized by the U.S. Congress.

1904 - U.S. Marines landed in Tangiers, Morocco, to protect U.S. citizens.

1915 - U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned in a disagreement over U.S. handling of the sinking of the Lusitania.

1947 - "Lassie" debuted on ABC radio. It was a 15-minute show.

1948 - Milton Berle hosted "Texaco Star Theater" NBC-TV. It was the show's debut.

1953 - The U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregated restaurants in Washington, DC.

1961 - The Milwaukee Braves set a major league baseball record when four consecutive home runs in the seventh inning.

1965 - U.S. troops in South Vietnam were given orders to begin fighting offensively.

1967 - Israeli airplanes attacked the USS Liberty in the Mediterranean during the 6-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. 34 U.S. Navy crewmen were killed. Israel later called the incident a tragic mistake due to the mis-identification of the ship. The U.S. has never publicly investigated the incident.

1968 - James Earl Ray was captured at the London Airport. He was suspected of assassinating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

1969 - The New York Yankees retired Mickey Mantle's number (7).

1969 - It was announced that there would be a single schedule for both the NFL and AFL.

1969 - U.S. President Richard Nixon met with President Thieu of South Vietnam to tell him 25,000 U.S. troops would pull out by August.

1978 - A jury in Clark County, Nevada, ruled that the "Mormon will," was a forgery. The work was supposedly written by Howard Hughes.

1982 - U.S. President Reagan became the first American chief executive to address a joint session of the British Parliament.

1986 - The Boston Celtics won their 16th NBA championship.

1987 - Fawn Hill began testifying in the Iran-Contra hearings. She said that she had helped to shred some documents.

1988 - The judge in the Iran-Contra conspiracy case ruled that Oliver North, John Poindexter, Richard Secord and Albert Hakim had to be tried separately.

1991 - A victory parade was held in Washington, DC, to honor veterans of the Persian Gulf War.

1994 - The warring factions in Bosnia agreed to a one-month cease-fire.

1995 - U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Scott O'Grady was rescued by U.S. Marines after surviving alone in Bosnia after his F-16 fighter was shot down on June 2.

1996 - China set off an underground nuclear test blast.

1998 - The National Rifle Association elected Charlton Heston to be its president.

1998 - In the U.S., the FTC brought an antitrust complaint against Intel Corp., alleging its policies punished other developers of microprocessor chips.

1998 - Honda agreed to pay $17.1 million for disconnecting anti-pollution devices in 1.6 million cars.

1998 - The space shuttle Discovery pulled away from Mir, ending America's three-year partnership with Russia.

2000 - The Dallas Stars and the New Jersey Devils played the NHL's longest scoreless game in Stanley Cup finals history. The fifth game of the series lasted 106 minutes and 21 seconds. The game ended with a goal by Mike Madano that allowed the Stars to play a game six back in Dallas.

2001 - Marc Chagall's painting "Study for 'Over Vitebsk" was stolen from the Jewish Museum in New York City. The 8x10 painting was valued at about $1 million. A group called the International Committee for Art and Peace later announced that they would return the painting after the Israelis and Palestinians made peace.

2001 - In Japan, a knife-wielding man murdered eight children at an elementary school.

2004 - Nate Olive and Sarah Jones began the first known continuous hike of the 1,800-mile trail down the U.S. Pacific Coast. They completed the trek at the U.S.-Mexico border on September 28.

June 9, 2011

68 A.D. - Roman Emperor Nero committed suicide.

1064 - Coimbra, Portugal fell to Ferdinand, the King of Castile.

1534 - Jacques Cartier became the first to sail into the river he named Saint Lawrence.

1790 - John Barry copyrighted "Philadelphia Spelling Book." It was the first American book to be copyrighted.

1790 - Civil war broke out in Martinique.

1860 - The book, "Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter" by Mrs. Ann Stevens, was offered for sale for a dime. It was the first published "dime novel."

1861 - Mary Ann "Mother" Bickerdyke began working in Union hospitals.

1923 - Bulgaria’s government was overthrown by the military.

1931 - Robert H. Goddard patented a rocket-fueled aircraft design.

1934 - Donald Duck made his debut in the Silly Symphonies cartoon "The Wise Little Hen."

1940 - Norway surrendered to the Nazis during World War II.

1943 - The withholding tax on payrolls was authorized by the U.S. Congress.

1945 - Japanese Premier Kantaro Suzuki declared that Japan would fight to the last rather than accept unconditional surrender.

1946 - Mel Ott (with the New York Giants) became the first manager to be ejected from a doubleheader (both games).

1953 - A tornado struck Worcester, Massachusetts, killing about 100 people.

1959 - The first ballistic missile carrying submarine, the USS George Washington, was launched.

1965 - Michel Jazy ran the mile in 3 minutes, 53.6 seconds. He broke the record set by Peter Snell in 1964.

1972 - American advisor John Paul Vann was killed in a helicopter accident in Vietnam.

1978 - Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints struck down a 148-year-old policy of excluding black men from the Mormon priesthood.

1980 - Richard Pryor was severely burned by a "free-base" mixture that exploded. He was hospitalized more than two months.

1985 - Thomas Sutherland, an American educator, was kidnapped in Lebanon. He was not released until November 1991.

1985 - The Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA title by defeating the Boston Celtics.

1986 - The Rogers Commission released a report on the Challenger disaster. The report explained that the spacecraft blew up as a result of a failure in a solid rocket booster joint.

1998 - In Jasper, TX, three white men were charged in the dragging death of African-American James Byrd Jr.

1999 - NATO and Yugoslavia signed a peace agreement over Kosovo.

2000 - The U.S. Justice Department announced that it had not uncovered reliable evidence of conspiracy behind 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

2000 - Canada and the United States signed a border security agreement. The agreement called for the establishment of a border-enforcement team.

2000 - The U.S. House of Representatives voted to repeal gift and estate taxes. The bill called for the taxes to be phased out over 10 years.

2001 - Patrick Roy (Colorado Avalanche) became the first National Hockey League (NHL) player to win three Conn Smythe Trophies. The award is given to the playoff's Most Valuable Player.

June 10, 2011

1190 - Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa drowned in the Saleph River while leading an army of the Third Crusade to free Jerusalem.

1776 - The Continental Congress appointed a committee to write a Declaration of Independence.

1793 - The Jardin des Plantes zoo opened in Paris. It was the first public zoo.

1801 - The North African State of Tripoli declared war on the U.S. The dispute was over merchant vessels being able to travel safely through the Mediterranean.

1806 - New York's "Commercial Advertiser" became the first U.S. newspaper to cover the sport of harness racing.

1854 - The U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, held its first graduation.

1889 - Hattie McDaniel was born. She, for her role in "Gone With the Wind," was the first African-American to win an Academy Award.

1898 - U.S. Marines landed in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.

1902 - The "outlook" or "see-through" envelope was patented by Americus F. Callahan.

1909 - The SOS distress signal was used for the first time. The Cunard liner SS Slavonia used the signal when it wrecked off the Azores.

1916 - Mecca, under control of the Turks, fell to the Arabs during the Great Arab Revolt.

1920 - The Republican convention in Chicago endorsed woman suffrage.

1924 - The Italian socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti was kidnapped and murdered by Fascists in Rome.

1924 - The Republican National Convention was broadcast by NBC radio. It was the first political convention to be on radio.

1925 - The state of Tennessee adopted a new biology text book that denied the theory of evolution.

1935 - Alcoholic Anonymous was founded by William G. Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith.

1940 - Italy declared war on France and Britain. In addition, Canada declared war on Italy.

1942 - The Gestapo massacred 173 male residents of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, in retaliation for the killing of a Nazi official.

1943 - Laszlo Biro patented his ballpoint pen. Biro was a Hungarian journalist.

1943 - The Allies began bombing Germany around the clock.

1944 - The youngest pitcher in major league baseball pitched his first game. Joe Nuxhall was 15 years old (and 10 months and 11 days).

1946 - Italy established a republic replacing its monarchy.

1948 - Chuck Yeager exceeded the speed of sound in the Bell XS-1.

1954 - General Motors announced the gas turbine bus had been produced successfully.

1967 - Israel and Syria agreed to a cease-fire that ended the Six-Day War.

1970 - A fifteen-man group of special forces troops began training for Operation Kingpin. The operation was a POW rescue mission in North Vietnam.

1971 - The U.S. ended a 21-year trade embargo of China.

1977 - James Earl Ray escaped with 6 others from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Tennessee. Ray was recaptured June 13, 1977.

1983 - Johnny Bench announced his plans to retire. He was a catcher in the major leagues for 16 years.

1984 - The U.S. Army successfully tested an antiballistic missile.

1984 - The United States and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations for the first time in 117 years.

1985 - Frank Sinatra was portrayed as a friend of organized crime in a "Doonesbury" comic strip. Over 800 newspapers carried the panel.

1985 - The Israeli army pulled out of Lebanon after 1,099 days of occupation.

1987 - An earthquake hit 15 states from Iowa to South Carolina.

1988 - Author Louis L'Amour died at age 80.

1990 - The Civic Forum movement won Czechoslovakia's first free elections since 1946. The movement was founded by President Vaclav Havel.

1990 - Bulgaria's former Communist Party won the country's first free elections in more than four decades.

1993 - It was announced by scientists that genetic material was extracted from an insect that lived when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

1994 - U.S. President Clinton intensified sanctions against Haiti's military leaders. U.S. commercial air travel was suspended along with most financial transactions between Haiti and the U.S.

1995 - 26 people were killed in Medellin, Columbia, by a bomb blast that was blamed on drug traffickers.

1996 - The Colorado Avalanche defeated the Florida Panthers in a 1-0 triple overtime game. The win ended a four-game sweep for the Stanley Cup.

1996 - Britain and Ireland opened Northern Ireland peace talks. The IRA's political arm Sinn Fein was excluded.

1997 - Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot killed his defense chief Son Sen and 11 members of his family. He then fled his northern stronghold. The news did not emerge for three days.

1998 - The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that poor children in Milwaukee could attend religious schools at taxpayer expense.

1999 - NATO suspended air strikes in Yugoslavia after Slobodan Milosevic agreed to withdraw his forces from Kosovo.

June 11, 2011

1346 - Charles IV of Luxembourg was elected Holy Roman Emperor in Germany.

1488 - James III of Scotland was murdered after his defeat at the Battle of Sauchieburn, Stirling. He was succeeded by his son James IV.

1509 - King Henry VIII married his first of six wives, Catherine of Aragon.

1770 - Captain James Cook discovered the Great Barrier Reef off of Australia when he ran aground.

1776 - In America, the Continental Congress formed a committee to draft a Declaration of Independence from Britain.

1793 - Robert Haeterick was issued the first patent for a stove.

1798 - Napoleon Bonaparte took the island of Malta.

1847 - Sir John Franklin died in Canada while attempting to discover the Northwest Passage. Franklin was an English naval officer and an Arctic explorer.

1880 - Jeanette Rankin was born. She became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress.

1889 - The Washington Business High School opened in Washington, DC. It was the first school devoted to business in the U.S.

1895 - Charles E. Duryea received the first U.S. patent granted to an American inventor for a gasoline-driven automobile.

1903 - King Alexander and Queen Draga of Serbia were murdered in a coup by members of the Serbian army.

1910 - Jacques-Yves Cousteau was born. He was the French underwater explorer that invented the Aqua-Lung diving apparatus.

1912 - Silas Christoferson became the first pilot to take off from the roof of a hotel.

1915 - British troops took Cameroon in Africa.

1919 - Sir Barton became the first horse to capture the Triple Crown when he won the Belmont Stakes in New York City.

1927 - Charles A. Lindberg was presented the first Distinguished Flying Cross.

1930 - William Beebe dove to a record-setting depth of 1,426 feet off the coast of Bermuda. He used a diving chamber called a bathysphere.

1934 - The Disarmament Conference in Geneva ended in failure.

1936 - The Presbyterian Church of America was formed in Philadelphia, PA.

1937 - Soviet leader Josef Stalin began a purge of Red Army generals.

1940 - The Italian Air Force bombed the British fortress at Malta in the Mediterranean.

1942 - The U.S. and the Soviet Union signed a lend lease agreement to aid the Soviets in their effort in World War II.

1943 - During World War II, the Italian island of Pantelleria surrendered after a heavy air bombardment.

1947 - The U.S. government announced an end to sugar rationing.

1950 - Ben Hogan returned to tournament play after a near fatal car accident. He won the U.S. Open.

1955 - In France, 80 people were killed and more than 100 were injured when three cars crashed on the Le Mans racetrack. The cars had ploughed into the spectator's grandstand.

1963 - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested in Florida for trying to integrate restaurants.

1963 - Buddhist monk Quang Duc immolated himself on a Saigon street to protest the government of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.

1963 - Alabama Gov. George Wallace allowed two black students to enroll at the University of Alabama.

1967 - Israel and Syria accepted a U.N. cease-fire.

1972 - Hank Aaron tied the National League record for 14 grand-slam home runs in a career.

1973 - After a ruling by the Justice Department of the State of Pennsylvania, women were licensed to box or wrestle.

1977 - In the Netherlands, a 19-day hostage situation came to an end when Dutch marines stormed a train and a school being held by South Moluccan extremist. Two hostages and the six terrorists were killed.

1981 - The first major league baseball player's strike began. It would last for two months.

1981 - In Iran, more than 1,000 people were killed in an earthquake that measured 6.8 on the Richter ScaleRichter Scale. The town of Golbaf in the Kermin province was destroyed.

1982 - Steven Spielberg's movie "E.T." opened.

1985 - Karen Ann Quinlan died at age 31. Quinlan was a comatose patient whose case prompted a historic right-to-die court decision.

1987 - Margaret Thatcher became the first British prime minister in 160 years to win a third consecutive term of office.

1990 - The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law that would prohibit the desecration of the American Flag.

1991 - Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted. The eruption of ash and gas could be seen for more than 60 miles.

1993 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people who commit "hate crimes" could be sentenced to extra punishment. The court also ruled in favor of religious groups saying that they indeed had a constitutional right to sacrifice animals during worship services.

1993 - Steven Spielberg's movie "Jurassic Park" opened.

1994 - A car bomb blew up in Guadalajara, Mexico killing five people. The bombing was believed to be drug related.

1998 - Mitsubishi of America agreed to pay $34 million to end the largest sexual harassment case filed by the U.S. government. The federal lawsuit claimed that hundreds of women at a plant in Normal, IL, had endured groping and crude jokes from male workers.

1998 - Pakistan announced moratorium on nuclear testing and offered to talk with India over disputed Kashmir.

2001 - Timothy McVeigh was executed by the U.S. federal government for his role in the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City.

June 12, 2011

1099 - Crusade leaders visited the Mount of Olives where they met a hermit who urged them to assault Jerusalem.

1442 - Alfonso V of Aragon was crowned King of Naples.

1665 - England installed a municipal government in New York. It was the former Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam.

1667 - The first human blood transfusion was administered by Dr. Jean Baptiste. He successfully transfused the blood of a sheep to a 15-year old boy.

1812 - Napoleon's invasion of Russia began.

1838 - The Iowa Territory was organized.

1839 - Abner Doubleday created the game of baseball, according to the legend. However, evidence has surfaced that indicates that the game of baseball was played before 1800.

1849 - The gas mask was patented by L.P. Haslett.

1897 - Carl Elsener patented his penknife. The object later became known as the Swiss army knife.

1898 - Philippine nationalists declared their independence from Spain.

1900 - The Reichstag approved a second law that would allow the expansion of the German navy.

1901 - Cuba agreed to become an American protectorate by accepting the Platt Amendment.

1912 - Lillian Russel retired from the stage and was married for the fourth time.

1918 - The first airplane bombing raid by an American unit occurred on World War I's Western Front in France.

1921 - U.S. President Warren Harding urged every young man to attend military training camp.

1923 - Harry Houdini, while suspended upside down 40 feet above the ground, escaped from a strait jacket.

1926 - Brazil quit the League of Nations in protest over plans to admit Germany.

1929 - Anne Frank was born in Germany. She wrote in her diary about growing up in occupied Amsterdam during World War II. She died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945.

1931 - Al Capone and 68 of his henchmen were indicted for violating U.S. Prohibition laws.

1935 - U.S. Senator Huey Long of Louisiana made the longest speech on Senate record. The speech took 15 1/2 hours and was filled by 150,000 words.

1935 - The Chaco War was ended with a truce. Bolivia and Paraguay had been fighting since 1932.

1937 - The Soviet Union executed eight army leaders under Joseph Stalin.

1939 - The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was dedicated in Cooperstown, New York. This was exactly one hundred years to the day on which the game was invented by Abner Doubleday.

1941 - In London, the Inter-Allied Declaration was signed. It was the first step towards the establishment of the United Nations.

1944 - Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung announced that he would support Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek in the war against Japan.

1948 - Ben Hogan won his first U.S. Open golf classic.

1963 - "Cleopatra" starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison, and Richard Burton premiered at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City.

1963 - Civil rights leader Medgar Evers was fatally shot in front of his home in Jackson, MS.

1967 - State laws which prohibited interracial marriages were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

1971 - Tricia Nixon and Edward F. Cox were married in the White House Rose Garden.

1975 - Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was found guilty of corrupt election practices in 1971.

1978 - David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam" killer in New York, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for each of six killings.

1979 - Bryan Allen flew the Gossamer Albatross, man powered, across the English Channel.

1981 - Major league baseball players began a 49 day strike. The issue was free-agent compensation.

1982 - 75,000 people rallied against nuclear weapons in New York City's Central Park. Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, and Linda Ronstadt were in attendance.

1985 - Wayne "The Great One" Gretsky was named winner of the NHL's Hart Trophy. The award is given to the the league Most Valuable Player.

1985 - The U.S. House of Representatives approved $27 million in aid to the Nicaraguan contras.

1986 - South Africa declared a national state of emergency. Virtually unlimited power was given to security forces and restrictions were put on news coverage of the unrest.

1987 - Central African Republic's former emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa was sentenced to death for crimes he had committed during his 13-year rule.

1987 - U.S. President Reagan publicly challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

1990 - The parliament of the Russian Federation formally declared its sovereignty.

1991 - Russians went to the election polls and elected Boris N. Yeltsin as the president of their republic.

1991 - The Chicago Bulls won their first NBA championship. The Bulls beat the Los Angeles Lakers four games to one.

1992 - In a letter to the U.S. Senate, Russian Boris Yeltsin stated that in the early 1950's the Soviet Union had shot down nine U.S. planes and held 12 American survivors.

1994 - Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered outside her home in Los Angeles. O.J. Simpson was later acquitted of the killings, but he was held liable in a civil suit.

1996 - In Philadelphia a panel of federal judges blocked a law against indecency on the internet. The panel said that the 1996 Communications Decency Act would infringe upon the free speech rights of adults.

1997 - Interleague play began in baseball, ending a 126-year tradition of separating the major leagues until the World Series.

1997 - The U.S. Treasury Department unveiled a new $50 bill meant to be more counterfeit-resistant.

1998 - Compaq Computer paid $9 billion for Digital Equipment Corp. in largest high-tech acquisition.

1998 - A jury in Hattiesburg, MS, convicted 17-year-old Luke Woodham of killing two students and wounding seven others at Pearl High School.

1999 - NATO peacekeeping forces entered the province of Kosovo in Yugoslavia.

2003 - In Arkansas, Terry Wallis spoke for the first time in nearly 19 years. Wallis had been in a coma since July 13, 1984, after being injured in a car accident.

2009 - The switch from analog TV trasmission to digital was completed in the United States.

June 13, 2011

1415 - Henry the Navigator, the prince of Portugal, embarked on an expedition to Africa.

1777 - The Marquis de Lafayette arrived in the American colonies to help with their rebellion against the British.

1789 - Ice cream was served to General George Washington by Mrs. Alexander Hamilton.

1825 - Walter Hunt patented the safety pin. Hunt then then sold the rights for $400.

1866 - The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed by the U.S. Congress. It was ratified on July 9, 1868. The amendment was designed to grant citizenship to and protect the civil liberties of recently freed slaves. It did this by prohibiting states from denying or abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, depriving any person of his life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denying to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

1886 - King Ludwig II of Bavaria drowned in Lake Starnberg.

1888 - The U.S. Congress created the Department of Labor.

1898 - The Canadian Yukon Territory was organized.

1900 - China's Boxer Rebellion against foreigners and Chinese Christians erupted into violence.

1912 - Captain Albert Berry made the first successful parachute jump from an airplane in Jefferson, Mississippi.

1913 - Ralph Edwards, the host of "This is Your Life" and "Truth or Consequences" was born. Ronald Reagan was the only person to ever substitute for him.

1920 - The U.S. Post Office Department ruled that children may not be sent by parcel post.

1922 - Charlie Osborne started the longest attack on hiccups. He hiccuped over 435 million times before stopping. He died in 1991, 11 months after his hiccups ended.

1923 - The French set a trade barrier between the occupied Ruhr and the rest of Germany.

1927 - Charles Lindbergh was honored with a ticker-tape parade in New York City.

1927 - For the first time, an American Flag was displayed from the right hand of the Statue of Liberty.

1940 - Paris was evacuated before the German advance on the city.

1943 - German spies landed on Long Island, New York. They were soon captured.

1944 - Germany launched 10 of its new V1 rockets against Britain from a position near the Channel coast. Of the 10 rockets only 5 landed in Britain and only one managed to kill (6 people in London).

1944 - Marvin Camras patented the wire recorder.

1949 - Bao Dai entered Saigon to rule Vietnam. He had been installed by the French.

1951 - U.N. troops seized Pyongyang, North Korea.

1966 - The landmark "Miranda vs. Arizona" decision was issued by the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision ruled that criminal suspects had to be informed of their constitutional rights before being questioned by police.

1967 - Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall was nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson to become the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

1971 - The New York Times began publishing the "Pentagon Papers". The articles were a secret study of America's involvement in Vietnam.

1977 - James Earl Ray was recaptured after his escape from prison 3 days earlier.

1978 - Israelis withdrew the last of their invading forces from Lebanon.

1979 - Sioux Indians were awarded $105 million in compensation for the U.S. seizure in 1877 of their Black Hills in South Dakota.

1981 - At a parade in London a teen-ager fired six-blank shots at Queen Elizabeth II.

1983 - The unmanned U.S. space probe Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to leave the solar system. It was launched in March 1972. The first up-close images of the planet Jupiter were provided by Pioneer 10.

1988 - The Liggett Group, a cigarette manufacturer, was found liable for a lung-cancer death. They were, however, found innocent by the federal jury of misrepresenting the risks of smoking.

1989 - The Detroit Pistons won their first National Basketball Association title. They beat the L.A. Lakers in four games.

1989 - U.S. President George H.W. Bush exercised his first Presidential veto on a bill dealing with minimum wage.

1991 - In the first round of the U.S. Open golf tournament a spectator was killed when lightning struck.

1992 - Future U.S. President Bill Clinton criticized rap singer Sister Souljah for making remarks "filled with hatred" towards whites.

1994 - A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, found Exxon Corp. and Captain Joseph Hazelwood to be reckless in the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

1994 - O.J. Simpson was questioned by Los Angeles police concerning the deaths of his ex-wife and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

1995 - France announced that they would conduct eight more nuclear tests in the South Pacific.

1996 - In Montana, the 81-day standoff between the Freemen and the FBI ended when the anti-government group surrendered.

1997 - The same Denver jury that convicted Timothy McVeigh of the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahama City recommended the death penalty for his crime.

2000 - Julius "Dr. J." Erving issued a public appeal for help finding his 19-year-old son, Cory. Cory had been missing since May 28, 2000. His body was found July 6, 2000.

June 14, 2011

1381 - The Peasant’s Revolt, led by Wat Tyler, climaxed when rebels marched on London. They plundered, burned and captured the Tower of London and killed the Archbishop of Canterbury. The revolt was in response to a statute intended to hold down wages during a labor shortage.

1775 - The Continental Army was founded by the Second Continental Congress for purposes of common defense. This event is considered to be the birth of the United States Army. On June 15, George Washington was appointed commander-in-chief.

1777 - The Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopted the "Stars and Stripes" as the national flag of the United States. The Flag Resolution stated "Resolved: that the flag of the United States be made of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation."

1789 - Captain William Bligh of the HMS Bounty arrived in Timor in a small boat.

1834 - Cyrus Hall McCormick received a patent for his reaping machine.

1834 - Isaac Fischer Jr. patented sandpaper.

1841 - The first Canadian parliament opened in Kingston.

1846 - A group of U.S. settlers in Sonoma proclaimed the Republic of California.

1864 - Alois Alzheimer was born. He was a psychiatrist/pathologist, and in 1907 he wrote an article describing the disease that is named for him.

1893 - Philadelphia observed the first Flag Day.

1900 - Hawaii became a U.S. territory.

1907 - Women in Norway won the right to vote.

1917 - General John Pershing arrived in Paris during World War I.

1919 - The first non-stop trans-Atlantic flight began. Captain John Alcot and Lt. Arthur Brown flew from Newfoundland to Ireland.

1922 - Warren G. Harding became the first U.S. president to be heard on radio. The event was the dedication of the Francis Scott Key memorial at Fort McHenry.

1927 - Nicaraguan President Adolfo Diaz signed a treaty with the U.S. allowing American intervention in his country.

1932 - U.S. Representative Edward Eslick died on the floor of the House of Representatives while pleading for the passage of the bonus bill.

1940 - The Nazis opened their concentration camp at Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland.

1940 - German troops entered Paris. As Paris became occupied loud Speakers announced the implementation of a curfew being imposed for 8 p.m.

1943 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that schoolchildren could not be made to salute the U.S. flag if doing so conflicted with their religious beliefs.

1944 - Sixty U.S. B-29 Superfortress' attacked an iron and steel works factory on Honshu Island. It was the first U.S. raid against mainland Japan.

1945 - Burma was liberated by Britain.

1949 - The state of Vietnam was formed.

1951 - "Univac I" was unveiled. It was a computer designed for the U.S. Census Bureau and billed as the world's first commercial computer.

1952 - The Nautilus was dedicated. It was the first nuclear powered submarine.

1954 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an order adding the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance.

1954 - Americans took part in the first nation-wide civil defense test against atomic attack.

1965 - A military triumvirate took control in Saigon, South Vietnam.

1967 - Mariner 5 was launched from Cape Kennedy, FL. The space probe's flight took it past Venus.

1982 - Argentine forces surrendered to British troops on the Falkland Islands.

1983 - Five people were killed in a wing of a Ramada Inn in Fort Worth, TX. The fire began in stacked rolls of carpet and padding, the fumes that ensued were toxic.

1985 - The 17-day hijacking of TWA flight 847 began. The hijackers were Lebanese Shiite Muslim extremists.

1987 - The Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA title by defeating the defending Boston Celtics.

1989 - Former U.S. President Reagan received an honorary knighthood from Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.

1989 - Zsa Zsa Gabor was arrested in Beverly Hills for slapping a motorcycle policeman.

1990 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld police checkpoints that are used to examine drivers for signs of intoxication.

1992 - The Chicago Bulls won the NBA championship beating the Portland Trailblazers.

1994 - The New York Rangers won the Stanley Cup by defeating the Vancouver Canucks. It was the first time the Rangers had won the cup in 54 years.

1995 - Chechen rebels took 2,000 people hostage in a hospital in Russia.

1996 - The FBI released that the White House had done bureau background reports on at leat 408 people without justification.

2002 - Twelve people were killed and 50 were injured when a car bomb was used to attack the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan.

June 15, 2011

1215 - King John of England put his seal on the Magna Carta.

1381 - The English peasant revolt was crushed in London.

1389 - Ottoman Turks crushed Serbia in the Battle of Kosovo.

1607 - Colonists in North America completed James Fort in Jamestown.

1667 - Jean-Baptiste Denys administered the first fully-documented human blood transfusion. He successfully transfused the blood of a sheep to a 15-year old boy.

1752 - Benjamin Franklin experimented by flying a kite during a thunderstorm. The result was a little spark that showed the relationship between lightning and electricity.

1775 - George Washington was appointed head of the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress.

1836 - Arkansas became the 25th U.S. state.

1844 - Charles Goodyear was granted a patent for the process that strengthens rubber.

1846 - The United States and Britain settled a boundary dispute concerning the boundary between the U.S. and Canada, by signing a treaty.

1864 - An order to establish a military burial ground was signed by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. The location later became known as Arlington National Cemetery.

1866 - Prussia attacked Austria.

1877 - Henry O. Flipper became the first African American to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

1898 - The U.S. House of representatives approved the annexation of Hawaii.

1904 - The steamboat General Slocum erupted in fire killing more than 1,000 in New York City's East River.

1909 - Benjamin Shibe patented the cork center baseball.

1911 - The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. was incorporated in the state of New York. The company was later renamed International Business Machines (IBM) Corp.

1916 - U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America.

1917 - Great Britain pledged the release of all the Irish captured during the Easter Rebellion of 1916.

1919 - Captain John Alcock and Lt. Arthur W. Brown won $50,000 for successfully completing the first, non-stop trans-Atlantic plane flight.

1932 - Gaston Means was sentenced to 15 years for fraud in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.

1938 - Johnny Vandemeer, of the Cincinnati Reds, pitched his second straight no-hitter.

1940 - The French fortress of Verdun was captured by Germans.

1944 - American forces began their successful invasion of Saipan during World War II.

1947 - The All-Indian Congress accepted a British plan for the partition of India.

1958 - Greece severed military ties to Turkey because of the Cypress issue.

1964 - The last French troops left Algeria.

1978 - King Hussein of Jordan married 26-year-old American Lisa Halaby, who became Queen Noor.

1981 - The U.S. agreed to provide Pakistan with $3 billion in military and economic aid from October 1982 to October 1987.

1982 - In the capital city of Stanley, the Falklands war ended as Argentine troops surrendered to the British.

1983 - The U.S. Supreme Court reinforced its position on abortion by striking down state and local restriction on abortions.

1985 - U.S. Navy diver Robert D. Stethem was killed by the hijackers of Flight 847.

1986 - Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, reported that the chief engineer of the Chernobyl nuclear plant was dismissed for mishandling the incident at the plant.

1989 - In Shanghai three Chinese workers were sentenced to death for setting fire to a train during a pro-democracy protest.

1992 - It was ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court that the government could kidnap criminal suspects from foreign countries for prosecution.

1992 - U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle instructed a student to spell "potato" with an "e" on the end during a spelling bee. He had relied on a faulty flash card that had been written by the student's teacher.

1994 - Israel and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations.

1995 - During the O.J. Simpson murder trial, O.J. was asked to put on a pair of gloves. The gloves were said to have been worn by the killer on the night of the murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. The gloves appeared not to fit.

1996 - The Irish Republican Army set of a truck bomb in a retail district in Manchester England. The explosion wounded more than 200 people.

1998 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state prison inmates are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

1999 - South Korean naval forces sank a North Korean torpedo boat during an exchange in the disputed Yellow Sea.

2003 - In northeast London, a trailer was stolen that contained thousands of copies of J.K. Rowling's book "Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix." The empty trailer was discovered two days later.

2006 - The U.S. Supreme Court said that judges cannot throw out evidence collected by police who have search warrants but do not properly announced their arrival.

June 16, 2011

0455 - Rome was sacked by the Vandal army.

1487 - The War of the Roses ended with the Battle of Stoke.

1567 - Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned in Lochleven Castle in Scotland.

1815 - Napoleon defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Ligny, Netherlands.

1858 - In a speech in Springfield, IL, U.S. Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln said the slavery issue had to be resolved. He declared, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

1890 - The second Madison Square Gardens opened.

1883 - The New York Giants baseball team admitted all ladies for free to the ballpark. It was the first Ladies Day.

1897 - The U.S. government signed a treaty of annexation with Hawaii.

1903 - Ford Motor Company was incorporated.

1904 - The novel "Ulysses" by James Joyce took place. The main character of the book was Leopold Bloom.

1907 - The Russian czar dissolved the Duma in St. Petersburg.

1909 - Glenn Hammond Curtiss sold his first airplane, the "Gold Bug" to the New York Aeronautical Society for $5,000.

1922 - Henry Berliner accomplished the first helicopter flight at College Park, MD.

1925 - France accepted a German proposal for a security pact.

1932 - The ban on Nazi storm troopers was lifted by the von Papen government in Germany.

1940 - Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain became the prime minister of the Vichy government of occupied France.

1941 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the closure of all German consulates in the United States. The deadline was set as July 10.

1952 - "My Little Margie" debuted on CBS-TV.

1952 - "Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl" was published in the United States.

1952 - A Swedish rescue plane was shot down by Soviet fighters over Swedish territorial waters. The rescue plane was searching for a lost aircraft.

1955 - The U.S. House of Representatives voted to extend Selective Service until 1959.

1955 - Pope Pius XII excommunicated Argentine President Juan Peron. The ban was lifted eight years later.

1955 - Argentine naval officers launched an attack on President Juan Peron's headquarters. The revolt was suppressed by the army.

1958 - Hungarian prime minister Imre Nagy was hanged for treason. He had been the prime minister during the 1956 uprising that was crushed by Soviet tanks.

1961 - Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union while in Paris, traveling with the Leningrad Kirov Ballet.

1963 - 26-year-old Valentina Tereshkova went into orbit aboard the Vostok 6 spacecraft for three days. She was the first female space traveler.

1971 - An El Greco sketch, "The Immaculate Conception," was recovered in New York City by the FBI. The work had been stolen 35 years earlier.

1972 - Ulrike Meinhof was captured by West German police in Hanover. She was co-founder of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group and the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion).

1975 - The Simonstown agreement on naval cooperation between Britain and South Africa ended. The agreement was formally ended by mutual agreement after 169 years.

1976 - In Soweto, thousands of school children revolted against the South African government's plan to enforce Afrikaans as the language for instruction in black schools.

1977 - Leonid Brezhnev was named the first Soviet president of the USSR. He was the first person to hold the post of president and Communist Party General Secretary. He replaced Nikolai Podgorny.

1978 - U.S. President Carter and Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos ratified the Panama Canal treaties.

1978 - The film adaptation of "Grease" premiered in New York City.

1979 - General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong was executed for corruption. He was the former military ruler of Ghana from 1972-1978.

1980 - The movie "The Blues Brothers" opened in Chicago, IL.

1981 - The "Chicago Tribune" purchased the Chicago Cubs baseball team from the P.K. Wrigley Chewing Gum Company for $20.5 million.

1983 - Yuri Andropov was elected chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.

1984 - Wilson Ferreira Aldunate was arrested upon his return from an eleven year exile. Aldunate had been a popular Uruguayan opposition leader.

1985 - Willie Banks broke the world record for the triple jump with a leap of 58 feet, 11-1/2 inches in the U.S.A. championships in Indianapolis, IN.

1987 - A jury in New York acquitted Bernhard Goetz of attempted murder in the subway shooting of four young blacks he said were going to rob him. He was convicted of illegal possession of a weapon. Also, in 1996 a civil jury ordered Goetz to pay $43 million to one of the people he shot.

1989 - Hungarian prime minister Imre Nagy was reburied. The funeral brought at least a quarter of a million people to the streets of Budapest. Nagy had been prime minister during the 1956 uprising that was crushed by Soviet tanks. He was hanged for treason on June 16, 1958.

1992 - U.S. President George H.W. Bush welcomed Russian President Boris Yeltsin to a meeting in Washington, DC. The two agreed in principle to reduce strategic weapon arsenals by about two-thirds by the year 2003.

1993 - The U.S. Postal Service released a set of seven stamps that featured Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, Clyde McPhatter, Otis Redding, Ritchie Valens, Dinah Washington and Elvis Presley.

1996 - Russian voters had their first independent presidential election. Boris Yeltsin was the winner after a run-off.

1999 - Kathleen Ann Soliah was arrested by the FBI in St. Paul, MN. She had been wanted since 1976 after being indicted on murder conspiracy and explosives charges.

1999 - The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that a 1992 federal music piracy law does not prohibit a palm-sized device that can download high-quality digital music files from the Internet and play them at home.

2000 - U.S. federal regulators approved the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE Corp. The merger created the nation's largest local phone company.

2000 - U.S. Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson reported that an employee at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico had discovered that two computer hard drives were missing.

2008 - California began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

June 17, 2011

0362 - Emperor Julian issued an edict banning Christians from teaching in Syria.

1579 - Sir Francis Drake claimed San Francisco Bay for England.

1775 - The British took Bunker Hill outside of Boston.

1789 - The Third Estate in France declared itself a national assembly, and began to frame a constitution.

1799 - Napoleon Bonaparte incorporated Italy into his empire.

1837 - Charles Goodyear received his first patent. The patent was for a process that made rubber easier to work with.

1848 - Austrian General Alfred Windischgratz crushed a Czech uprising in Prague.

1854 - The Red Turban revolt broke out in Guangdong, China.

1856 - The Republican Party opened its first national convention in Philadelphia.

1861 - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln witnessed Dr. Thaddeus Lowe demonstrate the use of a hydrogen balloon.

1872 - George M. Hoover began selling whiskey in Dodge City, Kansas. The town had been dry up until this point.

1876 - General George Crook’s command was attacked and bested on the Rosebud River by 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne under the leadership of Crazy Horse.

1879 - Thomas Edison received an honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the trustees of Rutgers College in New Brunswick, NJ.

1885 - The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York City aboard the French ship Isere.

1912 - The German Zeppelin SZ 111 burned in its hanger in Friedrichshafen.

1913 - U.S. Marines set sail from San Diego to protect American interests in Mexico.

1917 - The Russian Duma met in a secret session in Petrograd and voted for an immediate Russian offensive against the German Army.

1924 - The Fascist militia marched into Rome.

1926 - Spain threatened to quit the League of Nations if Germany was allowed to join.

1928 - Amelia Earhart began the flight that made her the first woman to successfully fly across the Atlantic Ocean.

1930 - The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill became law. It placed the highest tariff on imports to the U.S.

1931 - British authorities in China arrested Indochinese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh.

1932 - The U.S. Senate defeated the bonus bill as 10,000 veterans massed around the Capitol.

1940 - The Soviet Union occupied Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

1940 - France asked Germany for terms of surrender in World War II.

1941 - WNBT-TV in New York City, NY, was granted the first construction permit to operate a commercial TV station in the U.S.

1942 - Yank, a weekly magazine for the U.S. armed services, began publication. The term "G.I. Joe" was first used in a comic strip by Dave Breger.

1942 - "Suspense" debuted on CBS Radio.

1944 - French troops landed on the island of Elba in the Mediterranean.

1944 - The republic of Iceland was established.

1950 - Dr. Richard H. Lawler performed the first kidney transplant in a 45-minute operation in Chicago, IL.

1953 - Soviet tanks fought thousands of Berlin workers that were rioting against the East German government.

1963 - The U.S. Supreme Court banned the required reading of the Lord's prayer and Bible in public schools.

1965 - Twenty-seven B-52’s hit Viet Cong outposts but lost two planes in South Vietnam.

1969 - Boris Spasky became chess champion of the world after checkmating former champion Tigran Petrosian in Moscow.

1970 - North Vietnamese troops cut the last operating rail line in Cambodia.

1972 - Five men were arrested for burglarizing the Democratic Party Headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, DC. The men all worked for the reelection of President Nixon. The event was the beginning of the Watergate affair.

1981 - In Cairo, Egypt, riots between Muslim and Coptic Christians result in the deaths of 17 people.

1982 - Former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon was interviewed by Diane Sawyer on "The CBS Morning News."

1985 - Judy Norton-Taylor was photographed for "Playboy" magazine.

1987 - American journalist Charles Glass was kidnapped. He was held captive for 62 days until he escaped on August 18, 1987.

1991 - The Parliament of South Africa repealed the Population Registration Act. The act had required that all South Africans for classified by race at birth.

1994 - O.J. Simpson drove his Ford Bronco across Los Angeles with police in pursuit and millions of people watching live on television. After the slow speed chase ended Simpson was arrested and charged with the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

June 18, 2011

1155 - Frederick I Barbarossa was crowned emperor of Rome.

1429 - French forces defeated the English at the battle of Patay. The English had been retreating after the siege of Orleans.

1621 - The first duel in America took place in the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts.

1667 - The Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames toward London.

1778 - Britain evacuated Philadelphia during the U.S. Revolutionary War.

1812 - The War of 1812 began as the U.S. declared war against Great Britain. The conflict began over trade restrictions.

1815 - At the Battle of Waterloo Napoleon was defeated by an international army under the Duke of Wellington. Napoleon abdicated on June 22.

1817 - London's Waterloo Bridge opened. The bridge, designed by John Rennie, was built over the River Thames.

1861 - The first American fly-casting tournament was held in Utica, NY.

1873 - Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for attempting to vote for a U.S. President.

1898 - Atlantic City, NJ, opened its Steel Pier.

1915 - During World War I, the second battle of Artois ended.

1918 - Allied forces on the Western Front began their largest counter-attack against the German army.

1925 - The first degree in landscape architecture was granted by Harvard University.

1927 - The U.S. Post Office offered a special 10-cent postage stamp for sale. The stamp was of Charles Lindbergh’s "Spirit of St. Louis."

1928 - Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean as she completed a flight from Newfoundland to Wales.

1936 - Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano was found guilty on 62 counts of compulsory prostitution.

1936 - The first bicycle traffic court was established in Racine, WI.

1939 - The CBS radio network aired "Ellery Queen" for the first time.

1942 - The U.S. Navy commissioned its first black officer, Harvard University medical student Bernard Whitfield Robinson.

1948 - The United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted its International Declaration of Human Rights.

1951 - General Vo Nguyen Giap ended his Red River Campaign against the French in Indochina.

1953 - Seventeen major league baseball records were tied or broken in a game between the Boston Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers.

1953 - Egypt was proclaimed to be a republic with General Neguib as its first president.

1959 - A Federal Court annulled the Arkansas law allowing school closings to prevent integration.

1959 - The first telecast received from England was broadcast in the U.S. over NBC-TV.

1961 - "Gunsmoke" was broadcast for the last time on CBS radio.

1966 - Samuel Nabrit became the first African American to serve on the Atomic Energy Commission.

1972 - A BEA Trident crashed just after takeoff from London Airport. All 118 people on board were killed.

1975 - Fred Lynn of the Boston Red Sox hit three home runs, a triple and a single in a game against the Detroit Tigers.

1979 - In Vienna, U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) 2.

1982 - The U.S. Senate approved the renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act for an additional twenty-five years.

1983 - Dr. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger.

1984 - Alan Berg was shot to death outside his home. Two white supremacists were convicted of civil rights violations in the murder.

1996 - Richard Allen Davis was convicted in San Jose, CA, of the 1993 kidnap-murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas.

1997 - Sirhan Sirhan was denied parole for the 10th time. He had assassinated presidential candidate Robert Kennedy in 1968.

1998 - The Walt Disney Co. purchased a 43% stake in the Web search engine company Infoseek Corp.

1998 - Nine commemorative U.S. postage stamps were reissued. The stamps were considered to be classically beautiful examples of stamp engraving.

1998 - "The Boston Globe" asked Patricia Smith to resign after she admitted to inventing people and quotes in four of her recent columns.

2000 - In Algiers, Algeria, the foreign ministers of Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a preliminary cease-fire accord and agreed to work toward a permanent settlement of their two-year border war.

2002 - In Jerusalem, a suicide bomber killed 19 people and injured at least 50 more on a city bus. The Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

2009 - NASA launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter/LCROSS probes to the Moon. It was the first American lunar mission since Lunar Prospector in 1998.

2009 - Greenland assumed control over its law enforcement, judicial affairs, and natural resources from the Kingdom of Denmark. Greenlandic became the official language.

June 19, 2011

0240 BC - Eratosthenes estimated the circumference of the Earth using two sticks.

1586 - English colonists sailed away from Roanoke Island, NC, after failing to establish England's first permanent settlement in America.

1778 - U.S. General George Washington's troops finally left Valley Forge after a winter of training.

1821 - The Ottomans defeated the Greeks at the Battle of Dragasani.

1846 - The New York Knickerbocker Club played the New York Club in the first baseball game at the Elysian Field, Hoboken, NJ. It was the first organized baseball game.

1862 - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln outlined his Emancipation Proclamation, which outlawed slavery in U.S. territories.

1864 - The USS Kearsarge sank the CSS Alabama off of Cherbourg, France.

1865 - The emancipation of slaves was proclaimed in Texas.

1867 - Mexican Emperor Maximillian was executed.

1867 - In New York, the Belmont Stakes was run for the first time.

1903 - The young school teacher, Benito Mussolini, was placed under investigation by police in Bern, Switzerland.

1910 - The first Father's Day was celebrated in Spokane, Washington.

1911 - In Pennsylvania, the first motion-picture censorship board was established.

1912 - The U.S. government established the 8-hour work day.

1917 - During World War I, King George V ordered the British royal family to dispense with German titles and surnames. On July 17, 1917, the family took the name "Windsor".

1933 - France granted Leon Trotsky political asylum.

1934 - The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration was established.

1934 - The U.S. Congress established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The commission was to regulate radio and TV broadcasting (later).

1937 - The town of Bilbao, Spain, fell to the Nationalist forces.

1939 - In Atlanta, GA, legislation was enacted that disallowed pinball machines in the city.

1942 - Norma Jeane Mortenson (Marilyn Monroe) and her 21-year-old neighbor Jimmy Dougherty were married. They were divorced in June of 1946.

1942 - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived in Washington, DC, to discuss the invasion of North Africa with U.S. President Roosevelt.

1943 - Henry Kissinger became a naturalized United States citizen.

1943 - The National Football League approved the merger of the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

1944 - The U.S. won the battle of the Philippine Sea against the Imperial Japanese fleet.

1951 - U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed the Universal Military Training and Service Act, which extended Selective Service until July 1, 1955 and lowered the draft age to 18.

1952 - "I’ve Got a Secret" debuted on CBS-TV.

1953 - Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, NY. They had been convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

1958 - In Washington, DC, nine entertainers refused to answer a congressional committee's questions on communism.

1961 - Kuwait regained complete independence from Britain.

1961 - The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a provision in Maryland's constitution that required state officeholders to profess a belief in God.

1964 - The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the U.S. Senate.

1965 - Air Marshall Nguyen Cao Ky became South Vietnam's youngest premier at age 34.

1968 - 50,000 people marched on Washington, DC. to support the Poor People's Campaign.

1973 - The Case-Church Amendment prevented further U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.

1973 - Pete Rose (Cincinnati Reds) got his 2,000th career hit.

1973 - The stage production of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" opened in London.

1973 - Gordie Howe left the NHL to join his sons Mark and Marty in the WHA (World Hockey League).

1976 - During three days of violence, black student protestors were massacred in Soweto, South Africa.

1978 - Garfield was in newspapers around the U.S. for the first time.

1981 - "Superman II" set the all-time, one-day record for theater box-office receipts when it took in $5.5 million.

1981 - The European Space Agency sent two satellites into orbit from Kourou, French Guiana.

1983 - Lixian-nian was chosen to be China's first president since 1969.

1986 - University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias died of a cocaine-induced seizure.

1987 - The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Louisiana law that required that schools teach creationism.

1989 - The movie "Batman" premiered.

1997 - William Hague became the youngest leader of Britain's Conservative party in nearly 200 years.

1998 - Gateway was fined more than $400,000 for illegally shipping personal computers to 16 countries subject to U.S. export controls.

1998 - A study released said that smoking more than doubles risks of developing dementia and Alzheimer's.

1998 - Switzerland's three largest banks offered $600 million to settle claims they'd stolen the assets of Holocaust victims during World War II. Jewish leaders called the offer insultingly low.

1999 - Stephen King was struck from behind by a mini-van while walking along a road in Maine.

1999 - The Dallas Stars won their first NHL Stanley Cup by defeating the Buffalo Sabres in the third overtime of game six.

2000 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a group prayer led by students at public-school football games violated the 1st Amendment's principle that called for the separation of church and state.

June 20, 2011

0451 - Roman and Barbarian warriors brought Attila's army to a halt at the Catalaunian Plains in eastern France.

1397 - The Union of Kalmar united Denmark, Sweden, and Norway under one monarch.

1756 - In India, 150 British soldiers were imprisoned in a cell that became known as the "Black Hole of Calcutta."

1782 - The U.S. Congress approved the Great Seal of the United States.

1791 - King Louis XVI of France was captured while attempting to flee the country in the so-called Flight to Varennes.

1793 - Eli Whitney applied for a cotton gin patent. He received the patent on March 14. The cotton gin initiated the American mass-production concept.

1837 - Queen Victoria ascended the British throne following the death of her uncle, King William IV.

1863 - West Virginia became the 35th state to join the U.S.

1863 - The National Bank of Philadelphia in Philadelphia, PA, became the first bank to receive a charter from the U.S. Congress.

1893 - A jury in New Bedford, MA, found Lizzie Borden innocent of the ax murders of her father and stepmother.

1898 - The U.S. Navy seized the island of Guam enroute to the Phillipines to fight the Spanish.

1910 - Mexican President Porfirio Diaz proclaimed martial law and arrested hundreds.

1910 - Fanny Brice debuted in the New York production of the "Ziegfeld Follies".

1923 - France announced it would seize the Rhineland to assist Germany in paying its war debts.

1941 - The U.S. Army Air Force was established, replacing the Army Air Corps.

1943 - Race-related rioting erupted in Detroit. Federal troops were sent in two days later to end the violence that left more than 30 dead.

1947 - Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was murdered in Beverly Hills, CA, at the order of mob associates angered over the soaring costs of his project, the Flamingo resort in Las Vegas, NV.

1948 - "Toast of the Town" debuted on CBS-TV. The show was hosted by Ed Sullivan.

1950 - Willie Mays graduated from high school and immediately signed with the New York Giants.

1955 - The AFL and CIO agreed to combine names and a merge into a single group.

1963 - The United States and Soviet Union signed an agreement to set up a hot line communication link between the two countries.

1966 - The U.S. Open golf tournament was broadcast in color for the first time.

1967 - Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston of violating Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted. The U.S. Supreme Court later overturned the conviction.

1977 - The Trans-Alaska Pipeline began operation.

1979 - ABC News correspondent Bill Stewart was shot to death in Managua, Nicaragua, by a member of President Anastasio Somoza's national guard.

1981 - In Casablanca, Morocco, riots resulted in the deaths of about 100 people.

1983 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employers must treat male and female workers equally in providing health benefits for their spouses.

1994 - In Los Angeles, O.J. Simpson pled innocent to the killing of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

1997 - The tobacco industry agreed to a massive settlement in exchange for major relief from mounting lawsuits and legal bills.

2001 - Barry Bonds, of the San Francisco Giants, hit his 38th home run of the season. The home run broke the major league baseball record for homers before the midseason All-Star break.

2001 - In Texas, Andrea Yates was arrested for drowning her five children in a bathtub.

2002 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the execution of mentally retarded murderers was unconstitutionally cruel. The vote was 6 in favor and 3 against.

June 21, 2011

1404 - Owain Glyndwr established a Welsh Parliament at Machynlleth and was crowned Prince of Wales.

1788 - The U.S. Constitution went into effect when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify it.

1834 - Cyrus McCormick patented the first practical mechanical reaper for farming. His invention allowed farmers to more than double their crop size.

1859 - Andrew Lanergan received the first rocket patent.

1913 - Georgia Broadwick became the first woman to jump from an airplane.

1937 - In Paris, Leon Blum's Popular Front Cabinet resigned.

1938 - In Washington, U.S. President Roosevelt signed the $3.75 billion Emergency Relief Appropriation Act.

1939 - Lou Gehrig quit baseball due to illness.

1940 - Richard M. Nixon and Thelma Catherine ‘Pat’ Ryan were married.

1941 - German troops entered Russia on a front from the Arctic to Black Sea.

1942 - Ben Hogan recorded the lowest score (to that time) in a major golf tournament. Hogan shot a 271 for 72 holes in Chicago, IL.

1945 - Pan Am announced an 88-hour round-the-world flight at a cost of $700.

1954 - The American Cancer Society reported significantly higher death rates among cigarette smokers than among non-smokers.

1954 - NBC radio presented the final broadcast of "The Railroad Hour."

1954 - Australian John Landy ran the mile in 3:58. He was the second person to achieve the feat.

1958 - In Arkansas, a federal judge let Little Rock delay school integration.

1958 - Linus Pauling and Detlev Bronke, both Americans, were elected to the Soviet Academy of Science.

1960 - In Zurich, German, Armin Hary ran 100-meters in a record 10.0 seconds.

1963 - In St. Louis, Bob Hayes set a record when he ran the 100-yard dash in 0:09.1.

1963 - France announced that they were withdrawing from the North Atlantic NATO fleet.

1964 - Three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, MS. Their bodies were found on August 4, 1964 in an earthen dam. Eight Ku Klux Klan members later went to federal prison on conspiracy charges.

1969 - In South Carolina, civil rights leader Rev. Ralph Abernathy was jailed on riot charges.

1970 - Tony Jacklin became the second British golfer in 50 years to win the U.S. Open golf tournament.

1973 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states may ban materials found to be obscene according to local standards.

1974 - The U.S. Supreme Court decided that pregnant teachers could no longer be forced to take long leaves of absence.

1981 - "Raiders of the Lost Ark" opened.

1982 - A jury in Washington, DC, found John Hinckley Jr. innocent by reason of insanity in the shootings of U.S. President Reagan and three other men.

1985 - Scientists announced that skeletal remains exhumed in Brazil were those of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele.

1989 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag as a form of political protest was protected by the First Amendment.

1993 - In Madrid, five senior military officers and two civilians were killed by a car bomb. 24 people were injured. The Basque terror group claimed responsibility.

2001 - Former Haitian Army colonel Carl Dorelien taken into custody in Port St. Lucie. Dorelien had been in exile since 1994 when he was sentenced to life in prison for his role in a 1994 massacre.

2001 - In Alexandria, VA, a U.S. federal grand jury indicted 13 Saudis and a Lebanese in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen.

2003 - The fifth Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," was published by J.K. Rowling. Amazon.com shipped out more than one million copies on this day making the day the largest distribution day of a single item in e-commerce history. The book set sales records around the world with an estimated 5 million copies were sold on the first day.

2004 - SpaceShipOne, designed by Burt Rutan and piloted by Mike Melvill, reached 328,491 feet above Earth in a 90 minute flight. The height is about 400 feet above the distance scientists consider to be the boundary of space.

June 22, 2011

1558 - The French took the French town of Thioville from the English.

1611 - English explorer Henry Hudson, his son and several other people were set adrift in present-day Hudson Bay by mutineers.

1772 - Slavery was outlawed in England.

1807 - British seamen board the USS Chesapeake, a provocation leading to the War of 1812.

1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated a second time.

1832 - J.I. Howe patented the pin machine.

1868 - Arkansas was re-admitted to the Union.

1870 - The U.S. Congress created the Department of Justice.

1874 - Dr. Andrew Taylor Still began the first known practice of osteopathy.

1909 - The first transcontinental auto race ended in Seattle, WA.

1911 - King George V of England was crowned.

1915 - Austro-German forces occupied Lemberg on the Eastern Front as the Russians retreat.

1925 - France and Spain agreed to join forces against Abd el Krim in Morocco.

1933 - Germany became a one political party country when Hitler banned parties other than the Nazis.

1939 - The first U.S. water-ski tournament was held at Jones Beach, on Long Island, New York.

1940 - France and Germany signed an armistice at Compiegne, on terms dictated by the Nazis.

1941 - Under the codename Barbarossa, Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

1942 - A Japanese submarine shelled Fort Stevens at the mouth of the Columbia River.

1942 - In France, Pierre Laval declared "I wish for a German victory".

1942 - V-Mail, or Victory-Mail, was sent for the first time.

1944 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed the "GI Bill of Rights" to provide broad benefits for veterans of the war.

1945 - During World War II, the battle for Okinawa officially ended after 81 days.

1946 - Jet airplanes were used to transport mail for the first time.

1956 - The battle for Algiers began as three buildings in Casbah were blown up.

1959 - Eddie Lubanski rolled 24 consecutive strikes in a bowling tournament in Miami, FL.

1964 - The U.S. Supreme Court voted that Henry Miller’s book, "Tropic of Cancer", could not be banned.

1969 - Judy Garland died from an accidental overdose of prescription sleeping aids. She was 47.

1970 - U.S. President Richard Nixon signed 26th amendment, lowering the voting age to 18.

1973 - Skylab astronauts splashed down safely in the Pacific after a record 28 days in space.

1977 - John N. Mitchell became the first former U.S. Attorney General to go to prison as he began serving a sentence for his role in the Watergate cover-up. He served 19 months.

1978 - James W. Christy and Robert S. Harrington discovered the only known moon of Pluto. The moon is named Charon.

1980 - The Soviet Union announced a partial withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan.

1981 - Mark David Chapman pled guilty to killing John Lennon.

1982 - The U.S. Department of Justice charged 18 Japanese with conspiring to steal industrial secrets from IBM.

1989 - The government of Angola and the anti-Communist rebels of the UNITA movement agreed to a formal truce in their 14-year-old civil war.

1992 - The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that hate-crime laws that ban cross-burning and similar expressions of racial bias violated free-speech rights.

1998 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that evidence illegally obtained by authorities could be used at revocation hearings for a convicted criminal's parole.

1998 - The 75th National Marbles Tournament began in Wildwood, NJ.

1999 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that persons with remediable handicaps cannot claim discrimination in employment under the Americans with Disability Act.

June 23, 2011

1683 - William Penn signed a friendship treaty with Lenni Lenape Indians in Pennsylvania.

1700 - Russia gave up its Black Sea fleet as part of a truce with the Ottoman Empire.

1758 - British and Hanoverian armies defeated the French at Krefeld in Germany.

1760 - The Austrians defeated the Prussians at Landshut, Germany.

1757 - Robert Clive defeated the Indians at Plassey and won control of Bengal.

1836 - The U.S. Congress approved the Deposit Act, which contained a provision for turning over surplus federal revenue to the states.

1848 - A bloody insurrection of workers in Paris erupted.

1860 - The U.S. Secret Service was created to arrest counterfeiters.

1865 - Confederate General Stand Watie, who was also a Cherokee chief, surrendered the last sizable Confederate army at Fort Towson, in the Oklahoma Territory.

1868 - Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for an invention that he called a "Type-Writer."

1884 - A Chinese Army defeated the French at Bacle, Indochina.

1902 - Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy renewed the Triple Alliance for a 12 year duration.

1904 - The first American motorboat race got underway on the Hudson River in New York.

1926 - The first lip reading tournament in America was held in Philadelphia, PA.

1931 - Wiley Post and Harold Gatty took off from New York on the first round-the-world flight in a single-engine plane.

1934 - Italy gained the right to colonize Albania after defeating the country.

1938 - The Civil Aeronautics Authority was established.

1938 - Marineland opened near St. Augustine, Florida.

1947 - The U.S. Senate joined the House in overriding President Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act.

1951 - Soviet U.N. delegate Jacob Malik proposed cease-fire discussions in the Korean War.

1952 - The U.S. Air Force bombed power plants on Yalu River, Korea.

1956 - Gamal Abdel Nasser was elected president of Egypt.

1964 - Henry Cabot Lodge resigned as the U.S. envoy to Vietnam and was succeeded by Maxwell Taylor.

1964 - The burned car of three civil rights workers was found prompting the FBI to begin a search. The men had been missing since June 21, 1964. Their bodies were found on August 4, 1964.

1966 - Civil Rights marchers in Mississippi were dispersed by tear gas.

1972 - U.S. President Nixon and White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman discussed a plan to use the CIA to obstruct the FBI's Watergate investigation.

1985 - All 329 people aboard an Air-India Boeing 747 were killed when the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland. The cause was thought to be a bomb.

1989 - The movie "Batman" was released nationwide.

1992 - John Gotti was sentenced in New York to life in prison after being convicted of racketeering charges.

1993 - Lorena Bobbitt of Prince William County, VA, sexually mutilated her husband, John, after he allegedly raped her.

1997 - Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, died in New York of burns suffered in a fire set by her 12-year old grandson. She was 61.

2003 - Apple Computer Inc. unveiled the new Power Mac desktop computer.

2004 - The U.S. proposed that North Korea agree to a series of nuclear disarmament measures over a three-month period in exchange for economic benefits.

2005 - Roger Ebert received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

June 24, 2011

1314 - Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce won over Edward II of England at the Battle of Bannockburn in Scotland.

1340 - The English fleet defeated the French fleet at Sluys, off the Flemish coast.

1497 - Italian explorer John Cabot, sailing in the service of England, landed in North America on what is now Newfoundland.

1509 - Henry VIII was crowned King of England.

1664 - New Jersey, named after the Isle of Jersey, was founded.

1675 - King Philip's War began when Indians massacre colonists at Swansee, Plymouth colony.

1793 - The first republican constitution in France was adopted.

1812 - Napoleon crossed the Nieman River and invaded Russia.

1844 - Charles Goodyear was granted U.S. patent #3,633 for vulcanized rubber.

1859 - At the Battle of Solferino, also known as the Battle of the Three Sovereigns, the French army led by Napoleon III defeated the Austrian army under Franz Joseph I in northern Italy.

1861 - Federal gunboats attacked Confederate batteries at Mathias Point, Virginia.

1862 - U.S. intervention saved the British and French at the Dagu forts in China.

1869 - Mary Ellen "Mammy" Pleasant officially became the Vodoo Queen in San Francisco, CA.

1896 - Booker T. Washington became the first African American to receive an honorary MA degree from Howard University.

1910 - The Japanese army invaded Korea.

1913 - Greece and Serbia annulled their alliance with Bulgaria following border disputes over Macedonia and Thrace.

1922 - The American Professional Football Association took the name of The National Football League.

1931 - The Soviet Union and Afghanistan signed a treaty of neutrality.

1940 - France signed an armistice with Italy.

1940 - TV cameras were used for the first time in a political convention as the Republicans convened in Philadelphia, PA.

1941 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt pledged all possible support to the Soviet Union.

1947 - Kenneth Arnold reported seeing flying saucers over Mt. Rainier, Washington.

1948 - The Soviet Union began the Berlin Blockade.

1953 - John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier announced their engagement.

1955 - Soviet MIG's down a U.S. Navy patrol plane over the Bering Strait.

1962 - The New York Yankees beat the Detroit Tigers, 9-7, after 22 innings.

1964 - The Federal Trade Commission announced that starting in 1965, cigarette manufactures would be required to include warnings on their packaging about the harmful effects of smoking.

1968 - "Resurrection City," a shantytown constructed as part of the Poor People's March on Washington D.C., was closed down by authorities.

1970 - The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

1970 - The movie "Myra Breckinridge" premiered.

1971 - The National Basketball Association modified its four-year eligibility rule to allow for collegiate hardship cases.

1975 - 113 people were killed when an Eastern Airlines Boeing 727 crashed while attempting to land during a thunderstorm at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

1982 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that no president could be sued for damages connected with actions taken while serving as President of the United States.

1985 - Natalia Solzhenitsyn the wife of exiled, Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, became a U.S. citizen.

1997 - 18-year-old Melissa Drexler was charged with murder in the death of her baby. Drexler had given birth during her prom.

1997 - The U.S. Air Force released a report on the "Roswell Incident," suggesting the alien bodies witnesses reported seeing in 1947 were actually life-sized dummies.

1998 - AT&T Corp. struck a deal to buy cable TV giant Tele-Communications Inc. for $31.7 billion.

1998 - Walt Disney World Resort admitted its 600-millionth guest.

2002 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that juries, not judges, must make the decision to give a convicted killer the death penalty.

2002 - A painting from Monet's Waterlilies series sold for $20.2 million.

2003 - In Paris, France, manuscripts by novelist Georges Simenon brought in $325,579. The original manuscript of "La Mort de Belle" raised $81,705.

June 25, 2011

0841 - Charles the Bald and Louis the German defeated Lothar at Fontenay.

1080 - At Brixen, a council of bishops declared Pope Gregory to be deposed and Archbishop Guibert as antipope Clement III.

1580 - The Book of Concord was first published. The book is a collection of doctrinal standards of the Lutheran Church.

1658 - Aurangzeb proclaimed himself emperor of the Moghuls in India.

1767 - Mexican Indians rioted as Jesuit priests were ordered home.

1788 - Virginia ratified the U.S. Constitution and became the 10th state of the United States.

1864 - Union troops surrounding Petersburg, VA, began building a mine tunnel underneath the Confederate lines.

1867 - Lucien B. Smith patented the first barbed wire.

1868 - The U.S. Congress enacted legislation granting an eight-hour day to workers employed by the Federal government.

1868 - Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina were readmitted to the Union.

1870 - In Spain, Queen Isabella abdicated in favor of Alfonso XII.

1876 - Lt. Col. Custer and the 210 men of U.S. 7th Cavalry were killed by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at Little Big Horn in Montana. The event is known as "Custer's Last Stand."

1877 - In Philadelphia, PA, Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone for Sir William Thomson (Baron Kelvin) and Emperor Pedro II of Brazil at the Centennial Exhibition.

1906 - Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw, the son of coal and railroad baron William Thaw, shot and killed Stanford White. White, a prominent architect, had a tryst with Florence Evelyn Nesbit before she married Thaw. The shooting took place at the premeire of Mamzelle Champagne in New York.

1910 - The U.S. Congress authorized the use of postal savings stamps.

1917 - The first American fighting troops landed in France.

1920 - The Greeks took 8,000 Turkish prisoners in Smyrna.

1921 - Samuel Gompers was elected head of the AFL for the 40th time.

1938 - Gaelic scholar Douglas Hyde was inaugurated as the first president of the Irish Republic.

1941 - Finland declared war on the Soviet Union.

1946 - Ho Chi Minh traveled to France for talks on Vietnamese independence.

1948 - The Soviet Union tightened its blockade of Berlin by intercepting river barges heading for the city.

1950 - North Korea invaded South Korea initiating the Korean War.

1951 - In New York, the first regular commercial color TV transmissions were presented on CBS using the FCC-approved CBS Color System. The public did not own color TV's at the time.

1952 - John Christie, the British murderer of 10 Rillington Place, was sentenced to death for killing six women.

1959 - The Cuban government seized 2.35 million acres under a new agrarian reform law.

1959 - Eamon De Valera became president of Ireland at the age of 76.

1962 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the use of unofficial non-denominational prayer in public schools was unconstitutional.

1964 - U.S. President Lyndon Johnson ordered 200 naval personnel to Mississippi to assist in finding three missing civil rights workers.

1966 - "Dark Shadows" began running on ABC-TV.

1968 - Bobby Bonds (San Francisco Giants) hit a grand-slam home run in his first game with the Giants. He was the first player to debut with a grand-slam.

1970 - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission handed down a ruling (35 FR 7732), making it illegal for radio stations to put telephone calls on the air without the permission of the person being called.

1973 - Erskine Childers Jr. became president of Ireland after the retirement of Eamon De Valera.

1973 - White House Counsel John Dean admitted that U.S. President Nixon took part in the Watergate cover-up.

1975 - Mozambique became independent. Samora Machel was sworn in as president after 477 years of Portuguese rule.

1981 - The U.S. Supreme Court decided that male-only draft registration was constitutional.

1985 - ABC’s "Monday Night Football" began with a new line-up. The trio was Frank Gifford, Joe Namath and O.J. Simpson.

1985 - New York Yankees officials enacted the rule that mandated that the team’s bat boys were to wear protective helmets during all games.

1986 - The U.S. Congress approved $100 million in aid to the Contras fighting in Nicaragua.

1987 - Austrian President Kurt Waldheim visited Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. The meeting was controversial due to allegations that Waldheim had hidden his Nazi past.

1990 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of an individual, whose wishes are clearly made, to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment. "The right to die" decision was made in the Curzan vs. Missouri case.

1991 - The last Soviet troops left Czechoslovakia 23 years after the Warsaw Pact invasion.

1991 - The Yugoslav republics of Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence from Yugoslavia.

1993 - Kim Campbell took office as Canada's first woman prime minister. She assumed power upon the resignation of Brian Mulroney.

1996 - Outside the Khobar Towers near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia a truck bomb exploded. The bomb killed 19 Americans and injured over 500 Saudis and Americans.

1997 - The Russian space station Mir was hit by an unmanned cargo vessel. Much of the power supply was knocked out and the station's Spektr module was severely damaged.

1997 - U.S. air pollution standards were significantly tightened by U.S. President Clinton.

1998 - The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the line-item veto thereby striking down presidential power to cancel specific items in tax and spending legislation.

1998 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that those infected with HIV are protected by the Americans With Disabilities Act.

1998 - Microsoft's "Windows 98" was released to the public.

1999 - Germany's parliament approved a national Holocaust memorial to be built in Berlin.

2000 - U.S. and British researchers announced that they had completed a rough draft of a map of the genetic makeup of human beings. The project was 10 years old at the time of the announcement.

2000 - A Florida judge approved a class-action lawsuit to be filed against American Online (AOL) on behalf of hourly subscribers who were forced to view "pop-up" advertisements.

June 26, 2011

1096 - Peter the Hermit's crusaders forced their way across Sava, Hungary.

1243 - The Seljuk Turkish army in Asia Minor was wiped out by the Mongols.

1483 - Richard III usurped himself to the English throne.

1541 - Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish Conqueror of Peru, was murdered by his former followers.

1794 - The French defeated an Austrian army at the Battle of Fleurus.

1804 - The Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the mouth of the Kansas River after completing a westward trek of nearly 400 river miles.

1819 - The bicycle was patented by W.K. Clarkson, Jr.

1844 - John Tyler took Julia Gardiner as his bride, thus becoming the first U.S. President to marry while in office.

1870 - The first section of the boardwalk in Atlantic City, NJ, was opened to the public.

1894 - The American Railway Union called a general strike in sympathy with Pullman workers.

1900 - The United States announced that it would send troops to fight against the Boxer rebellion in China.

1900 - A commission that included Dr. Walter Reed began the fight against the deadly disease yellow fever.

1907 - Russia's nobility demanded drastic measures to be taken against revolutionaries.

1908 - Shah Muhammad Ali's forces squelched the reform elements of Parliament in Persia.

1917 - General John "Black Jack" Pershing arrived in France with the American Expeditionary Force.

1925 - Charlie Chaplin's comedy, "The Gold Rush," premiered in Hollywood.

1926 - A memorial to the first U.S. troops in France was unveiled at St. Nazaire.

1924 - After eight years of occupation, American troops left the Dominican Republic.

1942 - The Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter was flown for the first time.

1945 - The U.N. Charter was signed by 50 nations in San Francisco, CA.

1948 - The Berlin Airlift began as the U.S., Britain and France started ferrying supplies to the isolated western sector of Berlin.

1951 - The Soviet Union proposed a cease-fire in the Korean War.

1959 - CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow interviewed Lee Remick. It was his 500th and final guest on "Person to Person."

1959 - U.S. President Eisenhower joined Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in ceremonies officially opening the St. Lawrence Seaway.

1961 - A Kuwaiti vote opposed Iraq's annexation plans.

1963 - U.S. President John Kennedy announced "Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a Berliner) at the Berlin Wall.

1971 - The U.S. Justice Department issued a warrant for Daniel Ellsberg, accusing him of giving away the Pentagon Papers.

1975 - Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency due to "deep and widespread conspiracy."

1976 - The CN (Canadian National) Tower in Toronto, Canada, opened.

1979 - Muhammad Ali, at 37 years old, announced that he was retiring as world heavyweight boxing champion.

1981 - In Mountain Home, Idaho, Virginia Campbell took her coupons and rebates and bought $26,460 worth of groceries. She only paid 67 cents after all the discounts.

1985 - Wilbur Snapp was ejected after playing "Three Blind Mice" during a baseball game. The incident followed a call made by umpire Keith O'Connor.

1987 - The movie "Dragnet" opened in the U.S.

1996 - The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Virginia Military Institute to admit women or forgo state support.

1997 - The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that made it illegal to distribute indecent material on the Internet.

1997 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld state laws that allow for a ban on doctor-assisted suicides.

1998 - The U.S. and Peru open school to train commandos to patrol Peru's rivers for drug traffickers.

1998 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employers are always potentially liable for supervisor's sexual misconduct toward an employee.

2000 - The Human Genome Project and Celera Genomics Corp. jointly announced that they had created a working draft of the human genome.

2000 - Indonesia's President Abdurrahman Wahid declared a state of emergency in the Moluccas due to the escalation of fighting between Christians and Muslims.

2001 - Ray Bourque (Colorado Avalanche) announced his retirement just 17 days after winning his first Stanley Cup. Bouque retired after 22 years and held the NHL record for highest-scoring defenseman and playing in 19 consecutive All-Star games.

2002 - David Hasseloff checked into The Betty Ford Center for treatment of alcoholism.

2002 - WorldCom Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

June 27, 2011

0363 - The death of Roman Emperor Julian brought an end to the Pagan Revival.

1693 - "The Ladies' Mercury" was published by John Dunton in London. It was the first women's magazine and contained a "question and answer" column that became known as a "problem page."

1743 - King George II of England defeated the French at Dettingen, Bavaria, in the War of the Austrian Succession.

1787 - Edward Gibbon completed "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." It was published the following May.

1801 - British forces defeated the French and took control of Cairo, Egypt.

1844 - Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were killed by mob in Carthage, IL.

1847 - New York and Boston were linked by telegraph wires.

1871 - The yen became the new form of currency in Japan.

1885 - Chichester Bell and Charles S. Tainter applied for a patent for the gramophone. It was granted on May 4, 1886.

1893 - The New York stock market crashed. By the end of the year 600 banks and 74 railroads had gone out of business.

1905 - The battleship Potemkin succumbed to a mutiny on the Black Sea.

1918 - Two German pilots were saved by parachutes for the first time.

1923 - Yugoslav Premier Nikola Pachitch was wounded by Serb attackers in Belgrade.

1924 - Democrats offered Mrs. Leroy Springs for vice presidential nomination. She was the first woman considered for the job.

1927 - The U.S. Marines adopted the English bulldog as their mascot.

1929 - Scientists at Bell Laboratories in New York revealed a system for transmitting television pictures.

1931 - Igor Sikorsky filed U.S. Patent 1,994,488, which marked the breakthrough in helicopter technology.

1940 - Robert Pershing Wadlow was measured by Dr. Cyril MacBryde and Dr. C. M. Charles. They recorded his height at 8' 11.1." He was only 22 at the time of his death on July 15, 1940.

1942 - The FBI announced the capture of eight Nazi saboteurs who had been put ashore from a submarine on New York's Long Island.

1944 - During World War II, American forces completed their capture of the French port of Cherbourg from the German army.

1949 - "Captain Video and His Video Rangers" premiered on the Dumont Television Network.

1950 - Two days after North Korea invaded South Korea, U.S. President Truman ordered the Air Force and Navy into the Korean conflict. The United Nations Security Council had asked for member nations to help South Korea repel an invasion from the North.

1954 - The world's first atomic power station opened at Obninsk, near Moscow.

1955 - The first "Wide Wide World" was broadcast on NBC-TV.

1955 - The state of Illinois enacted the first automobile seat belt legislation.

1957 - More than 500 people were killed when Hurricane Audrey hit the coastal area of Louisiana and Texas.

1958 - NBC's "Matinee Theatre" was seen for the final time.

1959 - The play, "West Side Story," with music by Leonard Bernstein, closed after 734 performances on Broadway.

1961 - Arthur Michael Ramsey was enthroned as the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury.

1964 - Ernest Borgnine and Ethel Merman were married. It only lasted 38 days.

1967 - The world's first cash dispenser was installed at Barclays Bank in Enfield, England. The device was invented by John Sheppard-Barron. The machine operated on a voucher system and the maximum withdrawal was $28.

1967 - Two hundred people were arrested during a race riot in Buffalo, NY.

1969 - Patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, clashed with police. This incident is considered to be the birth of the homosexual rights movement.

1972 - Bobby Hull signed a 10-year hockey contract for $2,500,000. He became a player and coach of the Winnipeg Jets of the World Hockey Association.

1973 - Former White House counsel John W. Dean told the Senate Watergate Committee about an "enemies list" that was kept by the Nixon White House.

1973 - Nixon vetoed a Senate ban on bombing Cambodia.

1976 - Palestinian extremists hijacked an Air France plane in Greece. There were 246 passengers and 12 crew onboard. The plane eventually was taken to Entebbe, Uganda where Israeli commandos stormed it on July 4. The raid resulted in the deaths of seven pasengers.

1980 - U.S. President Carter signed legislation reviving draft registration.

1984 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that individual colleges could make their own TV package deals.

1984 - The Federal Communications Commission moved to deregulate U.S. commercial TV by lifting most programming requirements and ending day-part restrictions on advertising.

1985 - Officials decertified Route 66.

1985 - The U.S. House of Representatives voted to limit the use of combat troops in Nicaragua.

1986 - The World Court ruled that the U.S. had broken international law by aiding Nicaraguan rebels.

1991 - Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall resigned from the U.S. Supreme Court. He had been appointed in 1967 by President Lyndon Johnson.

1992 - The body of kidnapped Exxon executive Sidney J. Reso was found buried in a makeshift grave in a state park in New Jersey. Arthur and Irene Seale were later convicted and sentenced to prison for the crime.

1995 - Qatar's Crown Prince Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani ousted his father in a bloodless palace coup.

1995 - Actor Hugh Grant was arrested in Los Angeles for engaging in "lewd behavior" with a prostitute in a rented BMW.

1998 - An English woman was impregnated with her dead husband's sperm after two-year legal battle over her right to the sperm.

1998 - In a live joint news conference in China U.S. President Clinton and President Jiang Zemin offered an uncensored airing of differences on human rights, freedom, trade and Tibet.

2002 - In the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission required companies with annual sales of more than $1.2 billion to submit sworn statements backing up the accuracy of their financial reports.

2005 - In Alaska's Denali National Park, a roughly 70-million year old dinosaur track was discovered. The track was form a three-toed Cretaceous period dinosaur.

June 28, 2011