On June 26 ...

In 1870, the first completed section of the famed Boardwalk in Atlantic City, N.J., was opened to the public.

In 1894 the American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs, called a general strike in sympathy with striking Pullman workers.

In 1900 a federal commission that included Dr. Walter Reed (for whom the Washington military hospital is named) began the fight against the deadly disease yellow fever.

In 1917 the first troops of the American Expeditionary Force reached France in World War I.

In 1919 the first issue of the Illustrated Daily News was published in New York by Robert McCormick and Joseph Medill Patterson. (It was later renamed the New York Daily News.)

In 1925 Charlie Chaplin’s comedy “The Gold Rush” premiered in Hollywood.

In 1944 the Republicans opened their national convention in Chicago with a keynote speech by California Gov. Earl Warren.

In 1945 the United Nations charter was signed in San Francisco by 50 nations.

In 1948 the Berlin airlift began in earnest as U.S., British and French planes started ferrying food and supplies to the isolated western sector of Berlin after Moscow had cut off land and water routes.

In 1959 President Dwight Eisenhower joined Queen Elizabeth II in ceremonies opening the St. Lawrence Seaway.

In 1963 President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin, where he declared: “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner).

In 1968 Chief Justice Earl Warren announced his intention to resign from the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1977 42 people were killed when a fire sent toxic smoke pouring through the the Maury County Jail in Columbia, Tenn.

In 1987 Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell announced his retirement, leaving a vacancy that was filled by Anthony Kennedy.

In 1990 President George H.W. Bush, who had campaigned for office on a pledge of “no new taxes,” conceded that tax increases would have to be included in any deficit-reduction package.

In 1993 President Bill Clinton announced that the United States had launched missiles against Iraqi targets because of “compelling evidence” that Iraq had plotted to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush.

In 1994 hundreds of thousands of gays and lesbians gathered in New York to mark the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn riot, an event believed to have launched the gay rights movement.

In 1996 the Supreme Court ordered the Virginia Military Institute to admit women or forgo state support.

In 2003 the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws in 13 states; the majority opinion said gays and lesbians were “entitled to respect for their private lives.”

In 2008 the Supreme Court struck down a handgun ban in the District of Columbia as it affirmed, 5-4, that an individual right to gun ownership existed.

In 2013 the Supreme Court, in two 5-4 votes, struck down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act and threw out an appeal related to California’s Proposition 8, taking a major step toward legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.

In 2014 the Supreme Court, in a 9-0 vote, struck down a 2007 Massachusetts law that mandates a 35-feet buffer zone around abortion clinics to allow patients unimpeded access.

In 2015 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that outlawing gay marriage and refusing to recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in other states violated the Constitution, thereby making same-sex marriage legal throughout the country. Also in 2015 at least 66 people died in separate Islamist assaults that rocked Kuwait, Tunisia and France just hours apart. The Islamic State took credit for a suicide bombing at a Kuwaiti mosque that killed 25 and an attack at a Tunisian seaside resort in which at least 37 tourists from three continents were shot to death before the attackers were killed; in France a man with a history of radical Islamist ties was taken into custody after police say he beheaded his boss and caused an explosion at a chemical factory.