TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1876

Lt. Col. Colonel George A. Custer and his 7th Cavalry were wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana.

On this date:

1867

Barbed wire was patented by Lucien B. Smith of Kent, Ohio.

1942

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was designated Commanding General of the European Theater of Operations during World War II. Some 1,000 British Royal Air Force bombers raided Bremen, Germany.

1947

“The Diary of a Young Girl,” the personal journal of Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl hiding with her family from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II, was first published.

1950

War broke out in Korea as forces from the communist North invaded the South.

1962

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that recitation of a state-sponsored prayer in New York State public schools was unconstitutional.

1973

Former White House Counsel John W. Dean began testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee, implicating top administration officials, including President Richard Nixon as well as himself, in the Watergate scandal and cover-up.

1990

The U.S. Supreme Court, in its first “right-to-die” decision, ruled that family members could be barred from ending the lives of persistently comatose relatives who had not made their wishes known conclusively.

1996

A truck bomb killed 19 Americans and injured hundreds at a U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia.

2003

The Recording Industry Association of America threatened to sue hundreds of individual computer users who were illegally sharing music files online.

2009

Death claimed Michael Jackson, the “King of Pop,” in Los Angeles at age 50 and actress Farrah Fawcett in Santa Monica, California, at age 62.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Civil rights activist James Meredith is 87. Basketball Hall of Famer Willis Reed is

78. Singer Carly Simon is

75. Actor-comedian Jimmie Walker is 73. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is

66. Actor-writer-director Ricky Gervais is 59. Basketball Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo is 54. Actress Angela Kinsey is 49. Actress Linda Cardellini is 45. Actress Busy Philipps is 41.