ON JUNE 12 ...
In 1898 Philippine nationalists declared independence from Spain.
In 1924 George H.W. Bush, the nation’s 41st president, was born in Milton, Mass.
In 1937 the Soviet Union executed eight army leaders during Josef Stalin’s ruthless purges.
In 1939 the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was dedicated in Cooperstown, N.Y.
In 1941 jazz pianist Chick Corea was born in Chelsea, Mass.
In 1963 civil rights leader Medgar Evers, 37, was shot to death outside his home in Jackson, Miss. (In 1994, Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of murdering Evers and was sentenced to life in prison; he died in 2001.)
In 1967 the Supreme Court struck down state laws banning interracial
marriages.
In 1971 President Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia married Edward Cox in the White House Rose Garden.
In 1978 David Berkowitz was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for each of the six “son of Sam” shooting deaths that had terrified New Yorkers.
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In 1979 cyclist Bryan Allen, 26, flew the human-powered aircraft Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel.
In 1981 Major League Baseball players began a 49-day strike over the issue of freeagent compensation. (The season did not resume until Aug. 10)
In 1987 President Ronald Reagan visited the Berlin Wall and, in a speech, challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”
In 1994 Nicole Brown Simpson and a friend, Ronald Goldman, were stabbed to death outside her Los Angeles home. (Her ex-husband, O.J. Simpson, was later acquitted of the killings in a criminal trial but held liable in a civil action.) Also in 1994 Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, the charismatic Hasidic Jewish leader, died in New York; he was 92.
In 1996 Senate Republicans chose Trent Lott of Mississippi to succeed Bob Dole as majority leader. Also in 1996 a panel of federal judges in Philadelphia blocked a law against indecency on the Internet, saying the 1996 Communications Decency Act would unlawfully chill adults’ free-speech rights.
In 1997 Major League Baseball began interleague play during the regular season. Also in 1997 the Treasury Department unveiled a new $50 bill intended to be more counterfeit-resistant.
In 1999 thousands of NATO peacekeeping troops poured into Kosovo by air and by land; in a surprising move, a Russian armored column entered Pristina before dawn to a hero’s welcome from Serb residents.
In 2002 fashion designer Bill Blass died; he was 79.
In 2003 U.S. fighter jets bombed a suspected terrorist camp and troops stormed through Sunni Muslim towns in Iraq, seeking Saddam Hussein loyalists in one of the biggest American military assaults since the war in Iraq began. Also in 2003 Academy Award-winning actor Gregory Peck died in Los Angeles; he was 87.
In 2005 American-educated professor and women’s rights activist Massouma al-Mubarak was named Kuwait’s first female Cabinet minister.
In 2012 Elinor Ostrom, the only woman to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, died; she was 78.
In 2013 Sarah Murnaghan, a 10-year-old girl with cystic fibrosis whose efforts to qualify for an organ donation spurred public debate over how organs are allocated, received a double-lung transplant in Philadelphia.
In 2015 President Barack Obama’s ambitious Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agenda unraveled in a stunning setback delivered by his own party as the House rejected an important piece of a package aimed at fast-tracking the controversial pact he was pursuing with 11 other Pacific Rim nations. Also in 2015 in France former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was cleared of pimping charges related to separate accusations that he had taken part in and even organized orgies.
In 2016 a gunman claiming alligience to Islamic State opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., leaving 49 people dead and 53 injured in the worst single-gunman mass shooting in U.S. history. Also in 2016 three races off Navy Pier for the Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series saw six teams battle in freshwater for the first time in America’s Cup history; slow winds had prevented an official race from taking place the day before.