TODAY IN WORLD HISTORY
Today is Wednesday, June 7, the 158th day of 2017. There are 207 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History On June 7, 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.
On this date • In 1654, King Louis XIV, age 15, was crowned in Rheims, 11 years after the start of his reign.
• 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 1892, Homer Plessy, a “Creole of color,” was arrested for refusing to leave a whites-only car of the East Louisiana Railroad. (Ruling on his case, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld “separate but equal” racial segregation, a concept it renounced in 1954.)
• In 1917, the Lions Clubs service organization was founded in Chicago. Actor-singer Dean Martin was born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio.
• In 1929, the sovereign state of Vatican City came into existence as copies of the Lateran Treaty were exchanged in Rome.
• In 1937, actress Jean Harlow died in Los Angeles at age 26.
• In 1958, singer-songwriter Prince was born Prince Rogers Nelson in Minneapolis.
• In 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 1967, the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic opened in San Francisco. Author-critic Dorothy Parker, famed for her caustic wit, died in New York at age 73.
• In 1977, Britons thronged London to celebrate the silver jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, who was marking the 25th year of her reign.
• In 1981, Israeli military planes destroyed a nuclear power plant in Iraq, a facility the Israelis charged could have been used to make nuclear weapons.
• In 1998, in a crime that shocked the nation, James Byrd Jr., a 49year-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. A third defendant received life with the possibility of parole.)
Ten years ago At the G-8 summit in Germany, Russian President Vladimir Putin, bitterly opposed to a U.S. missile shield in Europe, presented President George W. Bush with a surprise counterproposal built around a Soviet-era radar system in Azerbaijan; Bush promised to consider the idea, but ended up essentially rejecting it. After three days in jail for a reckless-driving probation violation, Paris Hilton was released by Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials to be sent home under house arrest. (The next day, a judge ordered Hilton back to jail, where she spent 21⁄2 weeks.)
Five years ago Attorney General Eric Holder clashed with Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee seeking more information about a flawed gun-trafficking investigation in Arizona known as “Operation Fast and Furious.” Bob Welch, a former member of Fleetwood Mac who went on to write songs and record several hits during a solo career, died in Nashville.