TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Tuesday, June 12, the 163rd day of 2018. There are 202 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On June 12, 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers, 37, was shot and killed outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi. (In 1994, Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of murdering Evers and sentenced to life in prison; he died in 2001.)

On this date:

In 1550, the city of Helsinki was established through a decree by King Gustavus I Vasa of Sweden.

In 1776, Virginia’s colonial legislature adopted a Declaration of Rights.

In 1939, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was dedicated in Cooperstown, New York.

In 1942, Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, received a diary for her 13th birthday, less than a month before she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis.

In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia, unanimously struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriages.

In 1978, David Berkowitz was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for each of the six “Son of Sam” .44-caliber killings that terrified New Yorkers.

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan, during a visit to the divided German city of Berlin, exhorted Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”

In 2016, an American-born Muslim opened fire at the Pulse nightclub, a gay establishment in Orlando, Florida, leaving 49 people dead and 53 wounded before being shot dead by police.

Ten years ago:

In a stinging rebuke to President George W. Bush’s anti-terror policies, a deeply divided Supreme Court ruled that foreign detainees held for years at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba had the right to appeal to U.S. civilian courts to challenge their indefinite imprisonment without charges.

Five years ago:

The director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Keith Alexander, vigorously defended once-secret surveillance programs before the Senate Intelligence Committee, saying that collecting Americans’ phone records and tapping into their Internet activity had disrupted dozens of terrorist attacks.

Today’s Birthdays:

Former President George H.W. Bush is 94. Songwriter Richard M. Sherman is 90. Jazz musician Chick Corea is 77. Sportscaster Marv Albert is 77. 60. Actress Jenilee Harrison is 60.

Thought for Today:

“A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive.”— Pearl Bailey, American entertainer (1918-1990).