TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS SUNDAY, JUNE 7, the 159th day of 2020. There are 207 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:
On this date in 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia offered a resolution to the Continental Congress stating “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”
In 1654, King Louis XIV, age 15, was crowned in Rheims, 11 years after the start of his reign.
In 1712, Pennsylvania’s colonial assembly voted to ban the further importation of slaves.
In 1892, Homer Plessy, a “Creole of color,” was arrested for refusing to leave a whites-only car of the East Louisiana Railroad. (Ruling on his case, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld “separate but equal” racial segregation, a concept it renounced in 1954.)
In 1942, the Battle of Midway ended in a decisive victory for American naval forces over Imperial Japan, marking a turning point in the Pacific War.
In 1954, British mathematician, computer pioneer and code breaker Alan Turing died at age 41, an apparent suicide. (Turing, convicted in 1952 of “gross indecency” for a homosexual relationship, was pardoned in 2013.
In 1958, singer-songwriter Prince was born Prince Rogers Nelson in Minneapolis.
In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Griswold v. Connecticut, struck down, 7-2, a Connecticut law used to prosecute a Planned Parenthood clinic in New Haven for providing contraceptives to married couples.
In 1977, Britons thronged London to celebrate the silver jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, who was marking the 25th year of her reign.
In 1981, Israeli military planes destroyed a nuclear power plant in Iraq, a facility the Israelis charged could have been used to make nuclear weapons.
In 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that religious groups could sometimes meet on school property after hours.
In 1998, in a crime that shocked the nation, James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old black man, was hooked by a chain to a pickup truck and dragged to his death in Jasper, Texas. (Two white men were later sentenced to death.)
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Movie director James Ivory is 92. Actress Virginia McKenna is 89. Singer Tom Jones and actor Ronald Pickup are 80. Poet Nikki Giovanni is 77. Americana singersongwriter Willie Nile is 72. Actor Liam Neeson is 68. Author Louise Erdrich is 66. Actor William Forsythe is 65. Record producer L.A. Reid is 64. Latin pop singer Juan Luis Guerra is 63. Rock singer-musician Gordon Gano (The Violent Femmes) is 57. Rapper Ecstasy (Whodini) is 56. Rock musician Eric Kretz (Stone Temple Pilots) is 54. Rock musician Dave Navarro is 53. Actress Helen Baxendale is 50. Rock musician Eric Johnson (The Shins) is 44. Actress Adrienne Frantz and actor-comedian Bill Hader are 42. Actress Larisa Oleynik and former tennis player Anna Kournikova are 39. Actor Michael Cera is 32. Rapper Iggy Azalea is 30. Actressmodel Emily Ratajkowski and rapper Fetty Wap are 29.