On June 19, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War was over, and that all remaining slaves in Texas were free — an event celebrated as “Juneteenth.”
In 1911, Pennsylvania became the first state to establish a motion picture censorship board.
In 1917, King George V ordered the British royal family to dispense with German titles and surnames; the family took the name “Windsor.”
In 1944, in what would become known as the “Marianas Turkey Shoot,” U.S. carrier-based fighters decimate the Japanese Fleet with only a minimum of losses in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
In 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed having been convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviets.
In 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved by the U.S. Senate, 73-27, after surviving a filibuster.
In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law requiring any public school teaching the theory of evolution to also teach creation science.