ON JUNE 25 ...

In 1788, Virginia ratified the U.S. Constitution.

In 1876 Lt. Col. George Custer and his 7th Cavalry were massacred by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in the Battle of Little Bighorn in Montana.

In 1903 English author George Orwell was born Eric Blair in Motihari, India.

In 1942 Britain’s Royal Air Force sent 1,000 bombers on an air raid on Bremen, Germany, in World War II.

In 1950 war erupted when North Korean troops invaded South Korea.

In 1951 CBS transmitted the first commercial color telecast, a one-hour special broadcast from New York to four other cities.

In 1973 White House attorney John Dean told a Senate committee that President Richard Nixon joined in a plot to cover up the Watergate break-in.

In 1987 Pope John Paul II received Austrian President Kurt Waldheim at the Vatican, a meeting fraught with controversy because of allegations that Waldheim had hidden a Nazi past.

In 1991 the Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence.

In 1993 Kim Campbell was sworn in as Canada’s 19th prime minister and the first woman to hold the post.

In 1996 a truck bomb killed 19 Americans and injured hundreds outside a U.S. military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

In 1997 oceanographer and filmmaker Jacques Cousteau died in Paris; he was 87.

In 1999 the San Antonio Spurs won their first NBA title as they defeated the New York Knicks, 78-77, in five games.

In 2003 the music industry threatened to sue hundreds of individual computer users who were illegally sharing music files on the Internet.

In 2004 Republican Jack Ryan withdrew from the U.S. Senate race in Illinois after disclosures of visits to sex clubs with his wife.

In 2008 a divided Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that allowed capital punishment for people convicted of raping children under 12; the ruling also invalidated laws in five other states that allowed executions for child rape that did not result in the death of the victim.

In 2009 pop icon Michael Jackson died in Los Angeles; he was 50. Also in 2009 “Charlie’s Angels” star Farrah Fawcett died in Los Angeles; she was 62.

In 2013 the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision to strike down a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, freeing several states from federal oversight of their elections laws. Also in 2013 Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker was confirmed as President Barack Obama’s secretary of commerce in 97-1 Senate vote.

In 2015 the Affordable Care Act was upheld in a decisive 6-3 Supreme Court ruling in a lawsuit that had threatened to strip insurance subsidies from more than 6 million Americans in at least 34 states.