Today in history
On June 17, 1775, the Revolutionary War Battle of Bunker Hill resulted in a costly victory for the British, who suffered heavy losses.
In 1579, Sir Francis Drake arrived in present-day northern California, naming it New Albion and claiming English sovereignty.
In 1928, Amelia Earhart embarked on a trans-Atlantic flight from Newfoundland to Wales with pilots Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon, becoming the first woman to make the trip as a passenger.
In 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which boosted U.S. tariffs to historically high levels, prompting foreign retaliation.
In 1953, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas stayed the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, originally set for the next day, the couple’s 14th wedding anniversary. (They were put to death June 19.)
In 1972, President Richard Nixon’s eventual downfall began with the arrest of five burglars inside Democratic national headquarters in Washington, D.C.’s Watergate complex.
In 1994, after leading police on a slow-speed chase on Southern California freeways, O.J. Simpson was arrested and charged with murder in the slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. (Simpson was later acquitted in a criminal trial, but held liable in a civil trial.)
In 2015, nine people were shot to death in a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina; suspect Dylann Roof was arrested the following morning. (Roof has since been convicted of federal hate crimes and sentenced to death; he later pleaded guilty to state murder charges and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.)
Ten years ago: Hundreds of same-sex couples got married across California on the first full day that gay marriage became legal by order of the state’s highest court. (However, California voters later approved Proposition 8, which restricted nuptials to a union between a man and a woman.) The Boston Celtics won their
17th NBA title with a stunning 131-92 blowout over the Los Angeles Lakers in Game
6. Igor Larionov and Glenn Anderson were elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame along with former linesman Ray Scapinello and junior hockey builder Ed Chynoweth.
Five years ago: A G-8 summit of wealthy nations opened in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, under a cloud, with Russian President Vladimir Putin defiantly rejecting calls from the U.S., Britain and France to halt his political and military support for Syrian leader Bashar Assad’s regime.
One year ago: The jury in Bill Cosby’s sexual assault case declared itself hopelessly deadlocked, resulting in a mistrial for the 79-year-old TV star charged with drugging and groping a woman more than a decade earlier; prosecutors immediately announced they would pursue a second trial, which resulted in Cosby’s conviction.