TODAY IN HISTORY
1692: The first execution resulting from the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts took place as Bridget Bishop was hanged.
1963: President John F. Kennedy signed into law the Equal Pay Act of 1963, aimed at eliminating wage disparities based on gender.
1967: Six days of war in the Mideast involving Israel, Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq ended as Israel and Syria accepted a United Nations-mediated cease-fire.
1971: President Richard M. Nixon lifted a two-decades-old trade embargo on China.
1977: James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., escaped from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Tennessee with six others; he was recaptured June 13. 1978: Affirmed, ridden by Steve Cauthen, won the 110th Belmont Stakes to claim horse racing’s 11th Triple Crown.
1991: Jaycee Dugard, 11, of South Lake Tahoe, was abducted by Phillip and Nancy Garrido; Jaycee was held by the couple for 18 years before she was found by authorities.
2009: James von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist, opened fire in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., killing security guard Stephen T. Johns. (Von Brunn died at a North Carolina hospital in January 2010 while awaiting trial.) Donald Trump fired Miss California USA Carrie Prejean, who’d sparked controversy when she said gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry.
2013: Jury selection began in Sanford, Fla., in the trial of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, charged with second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. (Zimmerman was acquitted.)
2016: Muhammad Ali was laid to rest in his hometown of Louisville, Ky., after an all-day send-off. “Mr. Hockey” Gordie Howe, who set scoring records that stood for decades, died in Sylvania, Ohio, at 88.
2020: Protesters pulled down a century-old statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Va., the former capital of the Confederacy. NASCAR announced that it was banning the Confederate flag at all of its races and venues; the flag had been a common sight at those events for more than 70 years.