QUOTE UNQUOTE
“It's not the tragedies that kill us; it's the messes.”
DOROTHY PARKER, 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 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, actor-singer Dean Martin was born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio. In 1937, actress Jean Harlow died in Los Angeles at age 26.
In 1958, singersongwriter Prince was born Prince Rogers Nelson in Minneapolis. 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 49-year-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: After three days in jail for a recklessdriving 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: 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.
One year ago: Five people were killed and four were injured when a pickup struck a large group of bicyclists from behind on a two-lane road in Kalamazoo County, Mich.; the driver of the pickup, Charles Pickett Jr., was charged with second-degree murder and driving under the influence of drugs.