Today in history
Today is Sunday, June 10, the 161st day of 2018. There are 204 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On June 10, 1978, Affirmed, ridden by Steve Cauthen, won the 110th Belmont Stakes to claim horse racing’s 11th Triple Crown. (Alydar was second while Darby Creek Road came in third in a five-horse field.)
On this date:
In 1610, Englishman Lord De La Warr arrived at the Jamestown settlement to take charge of the Virginia Colony.
In 1692, the first execution resulting from the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts took place as Bridget Bishop was hanged.
In 1892, the Republican national convention in Minneapolis nominated President Benjamin Harrison for re-election and Whitelaw Reid for vice president. (Harrison, however, lost the election to former President Grover Cleveland.)
In 1907, eleven men in five cars set out on a race from “Peking to Paris”; Prince Scipione Borghese (ship-eeOH’-nay bohr-GAY’-seh) of Italy was the first to arrive in the French capital two months later.
In 1935, Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in Akron, Ohio, by Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith and William Griffith Wilson.
In 1942, during World War II, German forces massacred 173 male residents of Lidice (LIH’-dyiht-zeh), Czechoslovakia, in retaliation for the killing of Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich.
In 1944, German forces massacred 642 residents of the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane.
In 1957, in Canadian elections, John Diefenbaker (DEE’-fehn-BAY’-kur) led the Progressive Conservatives to an upset victory over the Liberal party of Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent (LOO’-ee sant law-RAHNT’).
In 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.
In 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.
In 1985, socialite Claus von Bulow was acquitted by a jury in Providence, Rhode Island, at his retrial of trying to murder his heiress wife, Martha “Sunny” von Bulow.
In 1990, Alberto Fujimori (foo-jee-MOHR’-ee) was elected president of Peru by a narrow margin over novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. Two members of the rap group 2 Live Crew were arrested in Hollywood, Florida (they and a third band member were later acquitted of obscenity charges).
Ten years ago: A Sudanese jetliner skidded off a runway and crashed into airport lights after landing in Khartoum, killing 30 of the 214 people on board.
Five years ago: Jury selection began in Sanford, Florida, 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.)
One year ago: British Prime Minister Theresa May struck a deal in principle with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party to prop up the Conservative government, which had been stripped of its majority in a disastrous election. Unseeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia stunned No. 3 Simona Halep (HAL’-ehp) 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 in an enthralling French Open final for the first title of her career. Tapwrit overtook favored Irish War Cry in the stretch to win the Belmont Stakes by two lengths.