Today in history

On June 30, 1777, British forces in the Revolutionary War evacuated New Jersey and retreated to Staten Island, N.Y.

In 1859 French acrobat Emile Blondin (born Jean Francois Gravelet) crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope as 5,000 people watched.

In 1906 the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act became law.

In 1917 singer Lena Horne was born in Brooklyn, N.Y.

In 1921 President Warren Harding appointed former President William Howard Taft as the nation’s chief justice.

In 1934 Adolf Hitler began a purge of hundreds of political and military leaders in Germany.

In 1936 the novel “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell was published in New York.

In 1952 “The Guiding Light,” a popular radio program, made its debut as a television soap opera.

In 1963 Pope Paul VI was crowned in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, making him the 262nd head of the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1971 three Soviet cosmonauts, in space for more than three weeks, were found dead when their Soyuz 11 spacecraft landed. Also in 1971 the 26th Amendment, lowering the minimum voting age to 18, was ratified.

In 1984 playwright Lillian Hellman died in Vineyard Haven, Mass.; she was 79.

In 1985 all 39 remaining American hostages seized in the hijacking of a TWA jet were freed after 17 days of captivity in Beirut.

In 1986 the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that states could ban homosexual acts between consenting adults.