TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS SATURDAY, JUNE 12, the 163rd day of 2021. There are 202 days left in the year. TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 1987, President Ronald Reagan, during a visit to the divided German city of Berlin, exhorted Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”
In 1630, Englishman John Winthrop, leading a fleet carrying Puritan refugees, arrived at the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where he became its governor.
In 1939, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was dedicated in Cooperstown, New York.
In 1942, Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, received a diary for her 13th birthday, less than a month before she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis.
In 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers, 37, was shot and killed outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi. (In 1994, Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of murdering Evers and sentenced to life in prison; he died in 2001.)
In 1964, South African Black nationalist Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison, along with seven other people, including Walter Sisulu, for committing sabotage against the apartheid regime (all were eventually released, Mandela in 1990).
In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia, unanimously struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriages. In 1971, Tricia Nixon and Edward F. Cox were married in the White House Rose Garden.
In 1981, major league baseball players began a 49-day strike over the issue of free-agent compensation. (The season did not resume until Aug. 10.)
In 1991, Russians went to the polls to elect Boris N. Yeltsin president of their republic.
In 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were slashed to death outside her Los Angeles home. (O.J. Simpson was later acquitted of the killings in a criminal trial, but was eventually held liable in a civil action.)
In 2004, former President Ronald Reagan’s body was sealed inside a tomb at his presidential library in Simi Valley, California, following a week of mourning and remembrance by world leaders and regular Americans.
In 2015, Joyce Mitchell, a worker at the maximum security Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, was arrested on charges of helping two convicted killers escape; Mitchell later pleaded guilty to promoting prison contraband and was sentenced to 2-1/3 to seven years in prison.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Songwriter Richard M. Sherman is 93. Sportscaster Marv Albert and singer Roy Harper are 80. Actor Roger Aaron Brown is 72. Actor Sonia Manzano is 71. Rock musician Bun E. Carlos (Cheap Trick) is 70. Country singer-musician Junior Brown is 69. Singer-songwriter Rocky Burnette is 68. Actor Timothy Busfield is 64. Singer Meredith Brooks and actor Jenilee Harrison are 63. Rock musician John Linnell (They Might Be Giants) is 62. Actors John Enos, Paul Schulze and Eamonn Walker, and rapper Grandmaster Dee (Whodini) are 59. Actor Paula Marshall is 57. Actor Frances O’Connor is 54. Actor Rick Hoffman is 51. Actor-comedian Finesse Mitchell is 49. Actor Mel Rodriguez is 48. Actor Jason Mewes is 47. Actor Michael Muhney is 46. Blues musician Kenny Wayne Shepherd is 44. Actor Timothy Simons is 43. Actor Wil Horneff and singer Robyn are 42. Rock singermusician John Gourley (Portugal. The Man) is 40. Actor Dave Franco and country singer Chris Young are 36. Actor Luke Youngblood is 35. Actor Ryan Malgarini is 29.