TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS TUESDAY, JUNE 7, the 158th day of 2022. There are 207 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On June 7, 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 1712, Pennsylvania’s colonial assembly voted to ban the further importation of slaves. 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 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 1967, author-critic Dorothy Parker, famed for her caustic wit, died in New York at age 73. 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; one of them, Lawrence Russell Brewer, was executed in 2011 and the other, John William King, was executed in April 2019. A third defendant received life with the possibility of parole.)

In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump claimed their parties’ presidential nominations following contests in New Jersey, California, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Singer Tom Jones is 82. Actor Liam Neeson is 70. Rock musician Dave Navarro is 55. Actor Helen Baxendale is 52. Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., is 50. Actor Karl Urban is 50. TV personality Bear Grylls is 48. Rock musician Eric Johnson (The Shins) is 46. Actor Adrienne Frantz is 44. Actor-comedian Bill Hader is 44. Actor Anna Torv is 43. Actor Larisa Oleynik is 41. Former tennis player Anna Kournikova is 41.