TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS THURSDAY, JUNE 7, the 158th day of 2018. There are 207 days left in the year. On this date in 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia offered a resolution to the Continental Congress stating “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”
In 1099, the First Crusade began besieging Jerusalem, which was captured the following month.
In 1654, King Louis XIV, age 15, was crowned in Rheims, 11 years after the start of his reign. In 1769, frontiersman Daniel Boone first began to explore present-day Kentucky.
In 1892, Homer Plessy, a “Creole of color,” was arrested for refusing to leave a whites-only car of the East Louisiana Railroad. (Ruling on his case, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld “separate but equal” racial segregation, a concept it renounced in 1954.)
In 1929, the sovereign state of Vatican City came into existence as copies of the Lateran Treaty were exchanged in Rome.
In 1948, the Communists completed their takeover of Czechoslovakia with the resignation of President Edvard Benes.
In 1958, singer-songwriter Prince was born Prince Rogers Nelson in Minneapolis.
In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Griswold v. Connecticut, struck down, 7-2, a Connecticut law used to prosecute a Planned Parenthood clinic in New Haven for providing contraceptives to married couples.
In 1977, Britons thronged London to celebrate the silver jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, who was marking the 25th year of her reign. In 1981, Israeli military planes destroyed a nuclear power plant in Iraq, a facility the Israelis charged could have been used to make nuclear weapons.
In 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that religious groups could sometimes meet on school property after hours. Ground was broken for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
In 1998, in a crime that shocked the nation, James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old black man, was hooked by a chain to a pickup truck and dragged to his death in Jasper, Texas. (Two white men were later sentenced to death; one of them, Lawrence Russell Brewer, was executed in 2011. A third defendant received life with the possibility of parole.)
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Movie director James Ivory is 90. Former Canadian Prime Minister John Turner is 89. Actress Virginia McKenna is 87. Singer Tom Jones and actor Ronald Pickup are 78. Poet Nikki Giovanni and actor Ken Osmond (TV: “Leave It to Beaver”) are 75. Former talk show host Jenny Jones is 72. Americana singer-songwriter Willie Nile is 70. Actress Anne Twomey is 67. Actor Liam Neeson is 66. Actress Colleen Camp and singer-songwriter Johnny Clegg are 65. Author Louise Erdrich is 64. Actor William Forsythe is 63. Record producer L.A. Reid is 62. Latin pop singer Juan Luis Guerra is 61. Vice President Mike Pence is 59. Rock singer-musician Gordon Gano (The Violent Femmes) is 55. Rapper Ecstasy (Whodini) is 54. Rock musician Eric Kretz (Stone Temple Pilots) is 52. Rock musician Dave Navarro is 51. Actress Helen Baxendale is 48. Actor Karl Urban is 46. TV personality Bear Grylls is 44. Rock musician Eric Johnson (The Shins) is 42. Actress Adrienne Frantz and actor-comedian Bill Hader are 40. Actress Anna Torv is 39. Actress Larisa Oleynik and tennis player Anna Kournikova are 37. Actor Michael Cera is 30. Actress Shelley Buckner is 29. Rapper Iggy Azalea is 28. Actress-model Emily Ratajkowski and rapper Fetty Wap are 27.