TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS THURSDAY, JUNE 30, the 181st day of 2022. There are 184 days left in the year. TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 1982, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution expired, having failed to receive the required number of ratifications for its adoption, despite having its seven-year deadline extended by three years. In 1918, labor activist and socialist Eugene V. Debs was arrested in Cleveland, charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 for a speech he’d made two weeks earlier denouncing U.S. involvement in World War I. (Debs was sentenced to prison and disenfranchised for life.) In 1934, Adolf Hitler launched his “blood purge” of political and military rivals in Germany in what came to be known as “The Night of the Long Knives.” In 1958, the U.S. Senate passed the Alaska statehood bill by a vote of 64-20. In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that the government could not prevent The New York Times or The Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers. A Soviet space mission ended in tragedy when three cosmonauts aboard Soyuz 11 were found dead of asphyxiation inside their capsule after it had returned to Earth. In 1985, 39 American hostages from a hijacked TWA jetliner were freed in Beirut after being held 17 days. In 1986, the Supreme Court, in Bowers v. Hardwick, ruled 5-4 that states could outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults (however, the nation’s highest court effectively reversed this decision in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas). In 2009, American soldier Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl went missing from his base in eastern Afghanistan and was later confirmed to have been captured by insurgents after walking away from his post. (Bergdahl was released on May 31, 2014, in exchange for five Taliban detainees; he pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, but was spared a prison sentence by a military judge.) In 2013, 19 elite firefighters known as members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots were killed battling a wildfire northwest of Phoenix after a change in wind direction pushed the flames back toward their position. In 2016, saying it was the right thing to do, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that transgender people would be allowed to serve openly in the U.S. military, ending one of the last bans on service in the armed forces. In 2020, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed a landmark bill retiring the last state flag bearing the Confederate battle emblem. Boston’s arts commission voted unanimously to remove a statue depicting a freed slave kneeling at Abraham Lincoln’s feet. TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actor-comedian David Alan Grier is 66. Actor Vincent D’Onofrio is 63. Former boxer Mike Tyson and actor Peter Outerbridge are 56. Actor Monica Potter is 51. Olympic gold medal swimmer Michael Phelps is 37.