TODAY IN HISTORY:

Johnny and June wed

In 1562, Roman Catholic troops killed Protestants at Vassy, France, in an incident that precipitated the Wars of Religion. The disorder, which swept over France almost unchecked for nearly 40 years, ended when Henry IV of Navarre seized the French throne and granted the Protestants — known as Huguenots ‚ partial freedom.

In 1632, Samuel de Champlain was appointed the first governor of New France.

In 1638, the first Swedish settlers, inventors of the log cabin, arrived in North America.

In 1692, the first three women charged with witchcraft were sentenced to hang in Salem, Mass.

In 1780, Pennsylvania became the first U.S. state to pass an act to abolish slavery.

In 1872, U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed an act creating Yellowstone National Park.

In 1875, the Hospital for Sick Children opened in Toronto with six beds and one nurse. A group of women led by Elizabeth McMaster rented an 11room house for $320 a year and declared the hospital open for “the admission and treatment of children.”

In 1927, the first Dominion men’s curling championship — better known as the Brier — began at the Granite Club in Toronto. The invitational event featured eight teams from Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan. The first national champions were a Halifax team skipped by Murray MacNeill.

In 1932, baby Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow, was kidnapped from his home in Hopewell, N.J. The baby’s body was found nearby on May 12. Bruno Hauptmann was convicted of kidnapping and murder in 1935 and sentenced to die in the electric chair. In 1943, work began on the Alaska Highway. In 1968, Johnny Cash and June Carter were married in Franklin, Ky. He proposed to her on stage at a concert in London, Ont. Together the two recorded four top 10 (country) singles: “It Ain’t Me Babe,” “Jackson,” “Long-Legged Guitar Pickin Man,” and “If I Were a Carpeneter.”