TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Thursday, June 25, the 177th day of 2020. There are 189 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in
History: On June 25, 1876, Lt. Col. Colonel George A. Custer and his 7th Cavalry were wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana.
On this date:
In 1788, Virginia ratified the U.S. Constitution.
In 1867, barbed wire was patented by Lucien B. Smith of Kent, Ohio.
In 1910, President William Howard Taft signed the White-Slave Traffic Act, more popularly known as the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for "immoral" purposes.
In 1942, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was designated Commanding General of the European Theater of Operations during World War II. Some 1,000 British Royal Air Force bombers raided Bremen, Germany.
In 1947, "The Diary of a Young Girl," the personal journal of Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl hiding with her family from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II, was first published.
In 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that recitation of a statesponsored prayer in New York State public schools was unconstitutional.
In 1973, former White House Counsel John W. Dean began testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee, implicating top administration officials, including President Richard Nixon as well as himself, in the Watergate scandal and cover-up.
In 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its first "right-to-die" decision, ruled that family members could be barred from ending the lives of persistently comatose relatives who had not made their wishes known conclusively.
In 1996, a truck bomb killed 19 Americans and injured hundreds at a U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia.
In 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America threatened to sue hundreds of individual computer users who were illegally sharing music files online.
In 2009, death claimed Michael Jackson, the "King of Pop," in Los Angeles at age 50 and actress Farrah Fawcett in Santa Monica, California, at age 62.
Ten years ago: Group of Eight leaders, including President Barack Obama, began meeting in Huntsville, Ontario, Canada. BP said its effort to drill a relief well through 2 1/2 miles of rock to stop the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was on target for completion by mid-August. Edwin Jackson threw the fourth no-hitter of the season, leading the Arizona Diamondbacks to a 1-0 victory over his former team, the Tampa Bay Rays.