Month: June 2021 (Page 1 of 6)

This Day in History | June 30th

On June 30, 1865, eight people were convicted by a military commission of conspiring with John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln. Four defendants were executed.

In 1908, the Tunguska Event took place in Russia as an asteroid exploded above Siberia, leaving 800 square miles of scorched or blown-down trees.

In 1918, labor activist and socialist Eugene V. Debs was arrested, charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 for a speech he’d made denouncing U.S. involvement in World War I.

In 1934, Hitler purges members of his own Nazi party in Night of the Long Knives.

In 1974 Soviet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov defects from U.S.S.R..

In 1982, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution expired, having failed to receive the required number of ratifications.

This Day in History | June 29th

On June 29, 1927, the first trans-Pacific airplane flight was completed as U.S. Army Air Corps Lt. Lester J. Maitland and Lt. Albert F. Hegenberger arrived at Wheeler Field in Hawaii aboard the Bird of Paradise, an Atlantic-Fokker C-2, after flying 2,400 miles from Oakland, California, in 25 hours, 50 minutes.

In 1946, authorities in British-ruled Palestine arrested more than 2,700 Jews in an attempt to stamp out extremists.

In 1967, Jerusalem was re-unified as Israel removed barricades separating the Old City from the Israeli sector.

In 1970, the United States ended a two-month military invasion into Cambodia.

In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled, 5-3, that President George W. Bush’s plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violated U.S. and international law.

This Day in History | June 28th

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are shot to death by a Bosnian Serb nationalist during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. The killings sparked a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I by early August.

On June 28, 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Alien Registration Act, also known as the Smith Act, which required adult foreigners residing in the U.S. to be registered and fingerprinted.

In 1950, North Korean forces captured Seoul, the capital of South Korea.

In 1951, a TV version of the radio comedy program “Amos ‘N’ Andy” premiered on CBS. (It was the first network TV series to feature an all-Black cast, but came under criticism for racial stereotyping.)

In 1964, civil rights activist Malcolm X declared, “We want equality by any means necessary” during the Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity in New York.

In 1969, in what is now regarded by many as history’s first major protest on behalf of equal rights for LGBTQ people, a police raid of the Stonewall Inn—a popular gay club located on New York City’s Christopher Street—turns violent as patrons and local sympathizers begin rioting against the authorities.

In 1978, the Supreme Court ordered the University of California-Davis Medical School to admit Allan Bakke, a white man who argued he’d been a victim of reverse racial discrimination.

This Day in History | June 27th

On June 27, 1787, English historian Edward Gibbon completed work on his six-volume work, “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”

In 1880, author-lecturer Helen Keller, who lived most of her life without sight or hearing, was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama.

In 1950, President Harry S. Truman announces that he is ordering U.S. air and naval forces to South Korea to aid the democratic nation in repulsing an invasion by communist North Korea.

In 1955, Illinois enacted the nation’s first automobile seat belt law. (The law did not require cars to have seat belts, but that they be made seat belt-ready.)

In 1985, the legendary Route 66, which originally stretched from Chicago to Santa Monica, California, passed into history as officials decertified the road.

In 1991, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black jurist to sit on the nation’s highest court, announced his retirement.

This Day in History | June 26th

On June 26, 1483, Richard III began his reign as King of England (he was crowned the next month at Westminster Abbey).

In 1919, the New York Daily News was first published.

In 1945, the charter of the United Nations was signed by 50 countries in San Francisco.

In 1948, the Berlin Airlift began after the Soviet Union cut off land and water routes to the isolated western sector of Berlin.

In 1977, Elvis Presley performed his last concert.

In 1996, the Supreme Court ordered the Virginia Military Institute to admit women or forgo state support.

In 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Texas’ sodomy laws, along with similar laws in 13 other states.

In 2015, same-sex marriage is made legal nationwide with Obergefell v. Hodges decision.

This Day in History | June 25th

On June 25, 1876, Native American forces led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull defeat the U.S. Army troops of General George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn near southern Montana’s Little Bighorn River.

1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that recitation of a state-sponsored prayer in New York State public schools was unconstitutional.

In 1973, former White House Counsel John W. Dean began testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee, implicating top administration officials in the Watergate scandal and cover-up.

In 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its first “right-to-die” decision, ruled that family members could be barred from ending the lives of persistently comatose relatives who had not made their wishes known conclusively.

In 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America threatened to sue hundreds of individual computer users who were illegally sharing music files online.

In 2009, Michael Jackson died in Los Angeles at age 50 and actor Farrah Fawcett died at age 62.

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