TODAY IN HISTORY
1917: The first troops of the American Expeditionary Force deployed to France during World War I landed in St. Nazaire.
1945: The charter of the United Nations was signed by 50 countries in San Francisco.
1948: The Berlin Airlift began in earnest after the Soviet Union cut off land and water routes to the isolated western sector of Berlin.
1963: President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin, where he delivered his famous speech expressing solidarity with the city’s residents, declaring: “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner).
1977: Forty-two people were killed when a fire sent toxic smoke pouring through the Maury County Jail in Columbia, Tenn. Elvis Presley performed his last concert at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.
1990: President George H.W. Bush went back on his “no-new-taxes” campaign pledge, conceding that tax increases would have to be included in any deficit-reduction package worked out with congressional negotiators.
1993: President Bill Clinton announced the U.S. had launched missiles against Iraqi targets because of “compelling evidence” Iraq had plotted to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush.
1996: The Supreme Court ordered the Virginia Military Institute to admit women or forgo state support.
1997: The first Harry Potter novel, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling, was published in the United Kingdom (it was later released in the United States under the title “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”).
2008: The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a handgun ban in the District of Columbia as it affirmed, 5-4, that an individual right to gun ownership existed.
2013: In deciding its first cases on the issue, the U.S. Supreme Court gave the nation’s legally married gay couples equal federal footing with all other married Americans and also cleared the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California.
2020: After protesters in Washington, D.C., attempted to pull down a statue of Andrew Jackson, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to protect monuments, memorials and statues.