TODAY IN HISTORY TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

Today is Wednesday, June 19.

On June 19, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War was over, and that all remaining slaves in Texas were free — an event celebrated to this day as “Juneteenth.”

ON THIS DATE

In 1775, George Washington was commissioned by the Continental Congress as commander in chief of the Continental Army.

In 1868, “Tales From the Vienna Woods,” a waltz by Johann Strauss “the Younger,” was first publicly performed by Strauss’ orchestra.

In 1917, during World War I, King George V ordered the British royal family to dispense with German titles and surnames; the family took the name “Windsor.”

In 1934, the Federal Communications Commission was created; it replaced the Federal Radio Commission.

In 1938, four dozen people were killed when a railroad bridge in Montana collapsed, sending a train known as the Olympian hurtling into Custer Creek.

In 1952, the U.S. Army Special Forces, the elite unit of fighters known as the Green Berets, was established at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The celebrity-panel game show “I’ve Got A Secret” debuted on CBS-TV.

In 1953, Julius Rosenberg, 35, and his wife, Ethel, 37, convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, were executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved by the U.S. Senate, 73-27, after surviving a lengthy filibuster.

In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law requiring any public school teaching the theory of evolution to teach creation science as well.

In 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned North Korea it would face consequences if it testfired a missile thought to be powerful enough to reach the West Coast of the United States.

In 2017, Otto Warmbier a 22-year-old American college student died in a Cincinnati hospital following his release by North Korea in a coma after more than a year in captivity.

Ten years ago: New York Times reporter David S. Rohde and Afghan reporter Tahir Ludin escaped from militant captors after more than seven months in captivity in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Five years ago: President Barack Obama announced he was dispatching 300 U.S. military advisers to Iraq to help quell a rising insurgency.

One year ago: The United States said it was pulling out of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, a day after the U.N. human rights chief denounced the Trump administration for separating migrant children from their parents; U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley cited longstanding U.S. complaints that the council was biased against Israel.