Today in history
By Associated Press
June 21
In 1377, King Edward III died after ruling England for 50 years; he was succeeded by his grandson, Richard II.
In 1834, Cyrus Hall McCormick received a patent for his reaping machine.
In 1942, an Imperial Japanese submarine fired shells at Fort Stevens on the Oregon coast, causing little damage.
In 1954, the American Cancer Society presented a study to the American Medical Association meeting in San Francisco which found that men who regularly smoked cigarettes died at a considerably higher rate than non-smokers.
In 1964, civil rights workers Michael H. Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James E. Chaney were slain in Philadelphia, Mississippi; their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam six weeks later. (Forty-one years later on this date in 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman, was found guilty of manslaughter; he was sentenced to 60 years in prison, where he died in January 2018.)
In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Miller v. California, ruled that states may ban materials found to be obscene according to local standards.
In 1977, Menachem Begin of the Likud bloc became Israel’s sixth prime minister.
In 1982, a jury in Washington, D.C. found John Hinckley Jr. not guilty by reason of insanity in the shootings of President Ronald Reagan and three other men.
In 1989, a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag as a form of political protest was protected by the First Amendment.
In 1997, the WNBA made its debut as the New York Liberty defeated the host Los Angeles Sparks 67-57.
In 2010, Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistan-born U.S. citizen, pleaded guilty to charges of plotting a failed car bombing in New York’s Times Square. (Shahzad was later sentenced to life in prison.)
In 2011, the Food and Drug Administration announced that cigarette packs in the U.S. would have to carry macabre images that included rotting teeth and gums, diseased lungs and a sewn-up corpse of a smoker as part of a graphic campaign aimed at discouraging Americans from lighting up.
In 2012, Miami’s LeBron James capped his title bid with 26 points, 13 assists and 11 rebounds as he led the Heat in a 121-106 rout of the Oklahoma City Thunder to win the NBA Finals in five games.
In 2013, the Food Network said it was dropping Paula Deen, barely an hour after the celebrity cook posted the first of two videotaped apologies online begging forgiveness from fans and critics troubled by her admission to having used racial slurs in the past.
In 2018, first lady Melania Trump visited with migrant children during a brief stop at a Texas facility housing some children separated from their parents at the border; she caused a stir when she left Washington wearing a green, hooded military jacket with lettering that said, “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?”
In 2021, a tornado packing 140 mph winds swept through communities in heavily populated suburban Chicago, damaging more than 100 homes and causing multiple injuries.
In 2022, a month after the Uvalde, Texas school massacre, the state’s public safety chief testified that police had enough officers on the scene to have stopped a gunman three minutes after he entered the building and killed 19 students and two teachers.
In 2023, The U.S. Agriculture Department approved the applications of two companies to sell chicken grown from animal cells, not from slaughtered birds.
June 22
In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated for a second time as Emperor of the French.
In 1870, the United States Department of Justice was created.
In 1937, Joe Louis began his reign as world heavyweight boxing champion by knocking out Jim Braddock in the eighth round of their fight in Chicago.
In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, more popularly known as the “GI Bill of Rights.”
In 1945, the World War II battle for Okinawa ended with an Allied victory.
In 1965, movie producer David O. Selznick (“Gone with the Wind”) died in Los Angeles at age 63.
In 1970, President Richard Nixon signed an extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that lowered the minimum voting age to 18.
In 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.
In 1981, Mark David Chapman pleaded guilty to killing rock star John Lennon. Abolhassan Bani-Sadr was deposed as president of Iran.
In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court, in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, unanimously ruled that “hate crime” laws that banned cross burning and similar expressions of racial bias violated free-speech rights.
In 1999, in a major upset at Wimbledon, top-ranked Martina Hingis lost in the opening round to Jelena Dokic, a 16-year-old qualifier ranked 129th.
In 2012, ex-Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was convicted by a jury in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, on 45 counts of sexually assaulting 10 boys over 15 years.
In 2022, a powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan, flattening stone and mud-brick homes and killing at least 1,000 people.
—From AP reports
