HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY

Today’s highlight: On June 7, 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.”

On this date:

1099: The First Crusade began besieging Jerusalem, which was captured the following month. 1654: King Louis XIV, age 15, was crowned in Rheims, 11 years after the start of his reign. 1769: Frontiersman Daniel Boone first began to explore present-day Kentucky. 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.

1929: The sovereign state of Vatican City came into existence as copies of the Lateran Treaty were exchanged in Rome. 1948: The Communists completed their takeover of Czechoslovakia with the resignation of President Edvard Benes. 1958: Singer-songwriter Prince was born Prince Rogers Nelson in Minneapolis.

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. 1977: Britons thronged London to celebrate the silver jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, who was marking the 25th year of her reign.

1981: Israeli military planes destroyed a nuclear power plant in Iraq, a facility the Israelis charged could have been used to make nuclear weapons.

1993: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that religious groups could sometimes meet on school property after hours. Ground was broken for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

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: Hillary Clinton suspended her pioneering campaign for the presidency and endorsed fellow Democrat Barack Obama. Five years ago: President Barack Obama vigorously defended the government’s just-disclosed collection of massive amounts of information from phone and Internet records as a necessary defense against terrorism, and assured Americans, “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.