This Day in History
On June 4, 1998, a federal judge sentenced Terry Nich- ols to life in prison for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
On this date:
In 1812, the Louisiana Territory was renamed the Missouri Territory, to avoid confusion with the recently admitted state of Louisiana. The U.S. House of Repre- sentatives approved, 79-49, a declaration of war against Britain.
In 1919, Congress ap- proved the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guar- anteeing citizens the right to vote regardless of their gen- der, and sent it to the states for ratification.
In 1939, the German ocean liner MS St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees from Germany, was turned away from the Florida coast by U.S. officials.
In 1940, during World War II, the Allied military evacu- ation of some 338,000 troops from Dunkirk, France, ended. British Prime Minister Win- ston Churchill declared: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
In 1942, the World War II Battle of Midway began, resulting in a decisive American victory against Japan and marking the turning point of the war in the Pacific.
In 1944, U-505, a German submarine, was captured by a U.S. Navy task group in the south Atlantic; it was the first such capture of an enemy vessel at sea by the U.S. Navy since the War of 1812. The U.S. Fifth Army began liber- ating Rome.
In 1972, a jury in San Jose, California, acquitted radical activist Angela Davis of mur- der and kidnapping for her al- leged connection to a deadly courthouse shootout in Marin County in 1970.
In 1985, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling striking down an Ala- bama law providing for a dai- ly minute of silence in public schools.
In 1986, Jonathan Jay Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, pleaded guilty in Washington to conspiring to deliver infor- mation related to the national defense to Israel. (Pollard, sentenced to life in prison, was released on parole on Nov. 20, 2015.)