TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Thursday, June 23.
Today’s highlights:
On June 23, 1888, abolitionist Frederick Douglass received one vote from the Kentucky delegation at the Republican convention in Chicago, effectively making him the first Black candidate to have his name placed in nomination for U.S. president. (The nomination went to Benjamin Harrison.)
On this date:
In 1860, a congressional resolution authorized creation of the United States Government Printing Office, which opened the following year.
In 1931, aviators Wiley Post and Harold Gatty took off from New York on a round-the-world flight that lasted eight days and 15 hours.
In 1947, the Senate joined the House in overriding Pres- ident Harry S. Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act, designed to limit the power of organized labor.
In 1956, Gamal Abdel Nasser was elected president of Egypt.
In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin opened a three-day summit at Glass- boro State College in New Jersey.
In 1972, President Rich- ard Nixon signed Title IX barring discrimination on
the basis of sex for “any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” (On the same day, Nixon and White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman discussed using the CIA to obstruct the FBI’s Watergate investigation. Revela- tion of the tape recording of this conversation sparked Nixon’s resignation in 1974.)
In 1985, all 329 people aboard an Air India Boe
ing 747 were killed when the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland because of a bomb authorities believe was planted by Sikh separatists.
In 1994, the movie “Forrest Gump,” starring Tom Hanks as a simple yet kindhearted soul and his serendipitous brushes with greatness, was released by Paramount Pictures.
In 1995, Dr. Jonas Salk, the medical pioneer who developed the first vaccine to halt the crippling rampage of polio, died in La Jolla, California, at age 80.
In 2016, Britain voted to leave the European Union after a bitterly divisive referendum campaign, toppling Prime Minister David Cameron, who had led the campaign to keep Britain in the EU.
In 2020, the Louisville police department fired an officer involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor more than three months earlier, saying Brett Hankison had shown “extreme indifference to the value of human life” when he fired 10 rounds into Taylor’s apartment. (A second officer was also fired.)
Ten years ago: Syria and Turkey desperately sought to ease tensions following an incident in which Syria shot down a Turkish reconnaissance plane, saying the plane had entered its airspace. Ashton Eaton broke the world record in the decathlon, finishing with 9,039 points at the U.S. Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon. (Eaton later, in 2015, surpassed his own record.)
One year ago: A 49-yearold Indiana grandmother became the first person to be sentenced in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol; Anna Morgan Lloyd was sentenced to probation and community service and had to pay $500 in restitution after pleading guilty to a single misdemeanor charge.