TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Tuesday, June 28, the 179th day of 2022. There are 186 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight in history
On June 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in France, ending World War I.
On this date
In 1838, Britain’s Queen Victoria was crowned in Westminster Abbey.
In 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, were shot to death in Sarajevo by Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip — an act that sparked World War I.
In 1939, Pan American Airways began regular trans-Atlantic air service with a flight that departed New York for Marseilles, France.
In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Alien Registration Act, also known as the Smith Act, which required adult foreigners residing in the U.S. to be registered and fingerprinted.
In 1950, North Korean forces captured Seoul, the capital of South Korea.
In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the University of California Davis Medical School to admit Allan Bakke, a White man who argued he’d been a victim of reverse racial discrimination.
In 1994, President Bill Clinton became the first chief executive in U.S. history to set up a personal legal defense fund and ask Americans to contribute to it.
In 2000, seven months after he was cast adrift in the Florida Straits, Elian Gonzalez was returned to his native Cuba.
In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled, 5-4,
that Americans had the right to own a gun for self-defense anywhere they lived.
In 2013, the four plaintiffs in the U.S. Supreme Court case that overturned California’s same-sex marriage ban tied the knot, just hours after a federal appeals court freed gay couples to obtain marriage licenses in the state for the first time in 4 1⁄2 years.
In 2019, avowed White supremacist James Alex Fields, who deliberately drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va., killing a young woman and injuring dozens, apologized to his victims before being sentenced to life in prison on federal hate crime charges.
Ten years ago: Attorney General Eric Holder became the first sitting Cabinet member held in contempt of Congress, a
rebuke pushed by Republicans seeking to unearth the facts behind a bungled guntracking operation known as Fast and Furious. (The vote was 255-67, with more than 100 Democrats boycotting.)
Today’s birthdays
Actor-director Mel Brooks is 96. Comedian-impressionist John Byner is 85. Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is 84. Actor Bruce Davison is 76. Actor Kathy Bates is 74. Football Hall of Famer John Elway is 62. Actor Jessica Hecht is 57. Actor Mary Stuart Masterson is 56. Actor John Cusack is 56. Actor Gil Bellows is 55. Actor-singer Danielle Brisebois is 53. Actor Tichina Arnold is 53. Actor Steve Burton is 52. Entrepreneur Elon Musk is 51. Singer Kellie Pickler is 36. Track star Elaine Thompson-Herah is 30.