On this date
In 1769, Daniel Boone began exploring what’s now Kentucky.
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 the court renounced in 1954.)
In 1929, the sovereign state of Vatican City came into existence as copies of the Lateran Treaty were exchanged in Rome.
In 1948, the Communists completed their takeover of Czechoslovakia.
In 1981, Israeli military planes destroyed a nuclear power plant in Iraq, a facility Israel charged could have been used to make nuclear weapons.
In 1993, ground was broken for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
In 1998, James Byrd Jr., a 49-yearold 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: Longshot Da’ Tara won the Belmont Stakes, spoiling Big Brown’s bid for a Triple Crown.
Five years ago: President Barack Obama defended the government’s collection of massive amounts of information from phone and internet records as a necessary defense against terrorism: “Nobody is listening to your telephone calls.”
One year ago: President Donald Trump announced his choice to replace James Comey a day ahead of the ousted FBI director’s congressional testimony, tapping Christopher Wray, a white-collar defense lawyer with a strong law enforcement background.